


armour adventures

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: AAverse, Adventure, Headcanons Aplenty, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Other, Quest fic, mild romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2020-03-02 09:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18808090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: After four thousand years of imprisonment within their own metal skin, the Leo Cloth wakes up one morning to find they are completely capable of motion and speech once more, and that Aiolia has vanished. Alongside their fellow Gold Cloths, it's time for the first adventure any of them have had since they were originally sealed. The first place to check for their missing Saints? The Underworld, of course.





	1. take my hand tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah so here's chapter one, which was written entirely to Simple Plan's Take My Hand, hence the chapter title. I'm still experimenting with the prose style and how I'm going to express Cloths talking via telepathy versus talking out loud to each other. This is very headcanon-rife, I'm gonna work on dropping those in hopefully in ways they make sense with foreshadowing n' stuff. Who knows, man, not me.

Everything, everything was dark. That was normal, but something seemed a little off. Leo strained against the metal, against the confines of their body and the warmth that couldn’t reach the polishing. They couldn’t detect Aiolia’s cosmos within the temple, warm as it usually was with a friendly scent of starlight. But he hadn’t arrived last night, and it was not like him to leave them alone for so long.

They strained a bit more, focusing what little sense they had to detecting that familiar cosmos within the boundaries of Sanctuary. Most of the other Gold Cloths were in their respective temples, from easygoing Aries at the foot of the hill to Pisces still boiling with rage at the summit. But Aiolia was nowhere to be found, and strangely enough, Leo couldn’t detect any of the other Gold Saints, either. Most of them should’ve been there. The Holy War hadn’t started yet, and Athena herself hadn’t even returned.

Movement had not come to them in a thousand years, but worry clouded the stars within them. It was not like Aiolia to leave. It was even less likely for all of the Gold Saints to have vanished during the night. How had they done it again, back then…? They’d learned millennia ago to stop trying to move, it was never worth the agony when they could simply teleport around and make their disapproval known through their cosmos.

_Is anyone there_? they called, shifting glittering lights into position, listening for the other cloths to notice. _Can anyone hear me_?

The wind began to blow, a harsh breeze sweeping across the hilltop and down to the valley, a shimmer of stardust. _You need to go, Leo. Within the hill_. 

That voice was familiar - a barest trace of a voice, the idea of sound within the wind. Sanctuary was a graveyard, and Leo remembered offering their cosmos to the ghost of the wind, back when he’d been a body and not a formless mass of raw grief.

_Help me,_ Leo said, and it was not a request but a fact. The wind blew a sigh, and the lion’s mask upon their helmet shifted, gold engravings in the form of eyes flickering open with a golden light. The Leo Temple, somewhat clean and clearly in use, flickered into view.

 

They shifted, setting a metal paw onto the floor. It clicked against the marble, a soft noise that held no trace of magic. They raised their paw again, and set it down, waiting for the nigh unbearable agony that came with any sort of independent movement. Nothing. They shook out their mane and twisted their head each way. Aiolia’s scent still filled the temple - he had been here recently, and lived here for years - but he hadn’t been there in a couple of days. Leo stepped off the platform - no pain, marvelous! - and onto the carpet. Euphoria filled them, the scent of glorious freedom, and they sprinted forward, tail whipping behind them--

\--Directly into the doors of the room in which they were kept. They felt no pain against the physics of the collision, falling forward into the door and their back hips recoiling upwards into a half-somersault against the door. It didn’t hurt, but it sure did feel awkward.

Nothing had felt awkward in four thousand years. _Am I free_? they wondered, the thought a split second long. They backed up, swinging their hind legs back onto the carpet, and let out a howl. Less feline than canine, but a howl nonetheless. The Saints below in the hill might have heard the misery. The Gold Cloths around them surely only heard the euphoria.

 

Pisces hadn’t heard a howl like _that_ in three hundred years. Nobody had known. Nobody had _known_ , and they hadn’t been able to tell anyone, three hundred years of slow madness, four thousand years of resilience gone in a single Holy War. _Go,_ said a voice, a voice they knew who had offered his heart in the three hundred years since. _Go, now. Avenge what you meant to. The corruption can’t hurt you if it’s Athena’s name you’re screaming_.

They wanted, for a moment, to ask what Lugonis meant, his haunting, tired voice drifting within their fins. But that howl… Leo.

It had to be Leo.

They burst from the pool, metal-muscle memory propelling them forward, shifting until gut became legs, fins became vambraces, a gaping maw became a helmet, a gilded mask pressed into the metal that hadn’t been there a moment before. No, they knew Aphrodite was going. They knew what Saga had been. They knew what Shion and Albafica had done, and they had done everything in their power to ensure nobody noticed the thin violet engraving inside their left thighplate.

A wail erupted from them, crazed and vengeful. _I’m going,_ they meant to say; what they said to the world was “Aaaaeeeurgh,” and they felt Lugonis smile as they bolted forward, pushing the doors of their chamber open into the Pisces temple proper and down the hallway, grabbing Aphrodite’s white cape from the hook as they passed the entryway. 

The doors to the temple opened before they got there, roses all around the perfectly trimmed hedges. Sunlight shone down upon them, setting the water drops on their soaking wet body aflame, and they laughed.

Tried to, anyhow. All they heard escape their breastplate was another wail, insane-sounding, like they’d lost all reason. They surveyed the temple grounds for a moment, the view of every other temple below them within view. Leo was the only other cloth that had discovered freedom, standing on top of a collapsed column - a twinge of regret, it was a nice column before Aiacos had ran facefirst into it - but doing the same as them.

“Aiolia’s gone,” Leo called, a voice Pisces hadn’t heard in millennia.

They answered with a wail of agreement, “Aaaueeugh,” and sprinted down the steps, jumping at the last one, springing themself down the hill. They caught the free corners of their cape and it caught the wind, sailing them directly to the other cloth. The landing wasn’t pretty. It was a landing nonetheless, and Aiolia wasn’t there to be upset about the small crater in his front yard.

“Where do you think they are?” Leo asked, twisting towards them and posing with one paw held aloft and their tail in the air.

“They went east,” another voice answered, and the two cloths turned. Sagittarius held their position a few temples up, bow over their shoulder and arrows stuffed inside a hind leg. “Something took them all and went east. There’s not a single human here, not anymore. We must have been forced into a brief hibernation to have not noticed.”

Pisces glanced at the both of them, wondering how they had so easily regained communication when their thoughts seemed incapable of translation. They shifted their left leg behind their right, covering it with the cape. Nobody could know. Nobody could _know_.

They sighed inwardly and gave the two a mild scream of a counterpoint. _Someone has to stay behind and watch the Athena Cloth, if she hasn’t awoken_. _Wasn’t she trapped too_?

“No, I don’t- don’t think so,” said Cancer, having just climbed up a temple down from them, sopping wet and in bearer form. “Athena would never have d- d-” They erupted into a wail not unlike Pisces’ attempts at speech, shaking their clawed helmet from side to side. Pisces knew what that meant, and bit back a laugh. Oh, they’d _known_ about that. Albafica had never been the only one. If Aries and Libra weren’t screaming too, that would have been a miracle.

“So we all go,” Leo said. “We’ve got to find them, they’re not much without us and I don’t want Aiolia left alone for too long.” Sagittarius let out a whistle and beckoned them with a gauntlet, sliding easily down from the roof of their temple to the stairs, trotting down to the bottom of the hill. Pisces gave a scream of a sigh, reached for their cape, and followed them down.

 

Virgo had the maps they’d needed - when was the last time they’d been the ones navigating, honestly? - and nobody had really expected Gemini to be one of the cloths who hadn’t regained speech yet, but somehow they’d managed to cobble together a plan. Sagittarius was right when they’d said that there wasn’t a human left in Sanctuary. Several of the other cloths had arrived to watch their meeting, bronze and silver and one very confused Phoenix who didn’t know how they got there and didn’t remember how to talk either.

Leo made the shift to bearer form quite easily with Ilias’ guidance. They inched over to Sagittarius, leaning into their shoulder-hip and letting out a breath of starlight when the centaur draped a wing over them. It had been so _long_ , and half of them had been driven far enough into madness that they couldn’t speak any more.

Virgo rolled up their plans, Cancer pacing the length of the square, Gemini screeching at any Silver cloth ballsy enough to get close to them.

“Sagittarius, Leo, Pisces, you’re the first team out. Do any of you need anything before you go?” Aries asked. Leo shook their head with a growl, and Pisces beckoned them forward, spinning on their heel towards the stairs.

“Aaaaaueeeugh,” they said, the words a pained screech in their breastplate, and headed up the stairs. _Come with me, I know the best way out_ , their cosmos meant. Leo felt the pressure of a pair of gauntlets on each side of their abdomen, lifting them gently onto Sagittarius’ back.

“Hold on, little one,” they said, and Leo did, sliding their vambraces around the centaur’s waist, ignoring the jeer from Capricorn. Sagittarius took off to follow Pisces, who seemed interested in leading them all the way up the hill, for some reason.

They followed their companion up into the Pisces temple, through the main hallway directly to the back. The entire place smelled a bit too much like flowers for Leo’s tastes, and they could see the barest trace of a spirit beside Pisces, white clothes and marigold-coloured hair tied in a messy ponytail. They hadn’t really acknowledged Lugonis’ existence, only knew he was there and talked to Ilias on occasion. 

Leo leaned into Sagittarius’ back, grateful that they’d been paired together. They knew Aries wouldn’t have separated them, not after how long it had been, how close they’d always been - the euphoria of moving was nothing compared to Sagittarius’ comforting presence. They shifted up on their back, resting the chin of their helmet on their shoulder. Sagittarius reached over to rest a gauntlet on their leg, gently rubbing in reassurance.

It felt so _good_. They almost closed their eyes to enjoy it - Aiolia always did that, and fighting his habits proved difficult - until a violet glimmer caught their eye.

A single swirling strand of engravement on Pisces’ left thigh. A rose stem, elegantly carved thorns every so often, glittering a violet that Leo had spend four thousand years associating with ‘danger’.

Cloths were not violet. Cloths were _never_ violet. Leo tapped Sagittarius’ shoulder-hip, gesturing as quietly as they could to Pisces’ thigh. Sagittarius’ cosmos tensed in alarm, then relaxed, following the cloth and the spirit through the temple as if they hadn’t seen anything. _That’s bad_ , Sagittarius whispered.

 _That’s very bad,_ Leo agreed, leaning into their back, hoping for reassurance that they were seeing things wrong, that it was a trick of the light, that it was maybe even just a bit of dirt; the panic rose through their breastplate and their mane, threatening to bubble over and spill out of them.

 _Relax, little one_ , Sagittarius hissed, hopefully quietly enough that Pisces wouldn’t here. _Don’t let them know we saw that. It might go away on its own._ Leo felt the pressure - a bare shimmer of warmth - rub against their thigh. Sagittarius saw it, Sagittarius could handle it. Pisces pushed the doors to the temple’s back gardens open, and Lugonis disappeared.

“Aaaauegeugh,” they said. _In here, there’s a way to where we need to be_ , they meant, and they crossed into the gardens easily, without a care in the world, like the poison they infected every bearer they’d ever had with wasn’t a concern. Perhaps their being incapable of speech had something to do with that single violet swirl.

It wasn’t comforting. Pisces lead them through to the very back of the garden, to what looked to be a shady spot by a column, overtaken by rose hedges, lined with some odd flower Leo didn’t recognize. Pisces knelt and pushed a bush out of the way. Before Leo could get a look at what Pisces was looking for, a light shimmered from whatever it was, blue and violet and gold all at once, it was _danger_ the way battle was, in the way seeing a Spectre in Sanctuary was, in the way watching Sagittarius fall to a Judge of Hell was, and Pisces turned their mask towards them.

“These bastards-- they’ll have him,” they said, and their voice sounded warped, almost electronic when Aiolia’s radio wasn’t getting a good connection, full of grief and raw anger and the words almost didn’t seem distinguishable from each other. They choked out another dry screech, one with no meaning besides mourning, and Pisces slipped into the tunnel made of shimmering light. Sagittarius swore under their mask, a curse several hundred years old, and pulling Leo close to ensure that they wouldn’t let go, followed them in.


	2. last surplice standing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's go check on the other side of the coin, shall wel?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight translation notes. Sevastó is Greek for 'revered' (exact translation, I'm going for 'revered, beloved, intended' here), in this case it is used by the Gold Surplices to refer to the Gold Saint they're trying to seduce over into Spectrehood. Similarly, agapi is 'love', and as someone'll mention eventually, foréas means 'bearer' or 'carrier'. Surplices don't use a human's proper name unless that's their Spectre, it's considered uncouth to call someone else yours when they're not. We're gonna pretend all these words are actually Ancient Greek, because obviously they're all talking in Greek due to setting. Yeah. I'm not sure if this'll even be important later but clarity is good.  
> Garuda Madeleine is an OC. She's based off of a historical nun from the infamous Louviers demonic possessions in the early 1600s, which is also when TLC was set. :p

Hades’ throne room was not usually the place for a meeting that didn’t involve the god himself, but there was simply no way to get two hundred some-odd surplices into the Judges’ boardroom. Garuda stood easily before the throne, back to it and mask-helmet to the gathered crowd. The Underworld was as noisy outside as it always was, wails of the damned and hymns of the exalted.

But inside the final castle before Elysium, past the temples of the Judges and of the holy stars, it was as quiet as dead, in all the right ways. Griffon and Wyvern flanked them on each side, Wyvern’s tail twitching with both anxiety and fury. Griffon was more still than a cloth, though Garuda could taste unease on the starlit air.

“As you all know by now,” Garuda began, and the crowd of surplices quieted; “All of our Spectres have vanished. Those on the ground and those within the Vaults, every last one of them has vanished. We have no way of tracing where they disappeared. Yes, we had guards, yes, there is no possible way this could have happened. Yes, it happened anyway.”

The crowd started muttering again. Garuda scanned them, noting where their favourites were. Behemoth, relaxed to one side, whose bearer had been resting within the Vaults and wouldn’t have been in this Holy War anyway. Mandrake, near them, the roots on their hips twitching with anxiety. They’d never been a calm one. Garuda couldn’t see Bennu within the crowd, having hoped they’d return early from their curse-bound brief time as the Phoenix Cloth, but no such luck.

“As far as we know, our Great Lord of Shadows has also vanished, alongside both of the twin gods and all of the minor gods who have allied with us. We have no method of tracking them, either. All we know is that all of the living humans that stand beside us are missing. I have already discussed our best plan of action alongside Griffon and Wyvern. We may not have bearers at the moment, but we are not Cloths. We have our own power. You all know your duties, you will stick by them. We will be sending out trios to sweep the moral ground world for any traces. Any volunteers to start?”

The doors to the throne room, behind the crowd, swung open before anyone could react. Footsteps approached from the shadowy hallway, the soft _click_ of more than a single pair of metal boots stepping across the threshold. The arrival crossed into the throne room into glittering torchlight.

Their pauldrons were sharp, deep violet trimmed with soft lavender and bright, river-blue engravings in all the right places, sharp scales sticking out from their arms and thighs, the mask pressed into their helmet a neutral expression. They felt like flowers, of drowning seas, and of power Garuda usually associated with Hades himself.

The Pisces Gold Surplice swept through, the crowd shoving each other aside to get out of their way. They were flanked on either side by Sagittarius and Taurus, both of whom flaunted similar, but less, amounts of prowess. All three gold surplices had shimmering white capes, as if they had bearers, as if they had any right to be awake. The very thought of it was terrifying.

“I believe I have a trio, young Garuda,” Pisces said, their voice whimsical. They placed a glove across their chest and one to the air, leaning forward, offering a half-bow of acknowledged mockery. “The winds of misery bring the scent east. Our greatest loves are not the only ones to have been taken.”

“You believe them taken, Pisces?” Griffon asked, from their side of the room, far calmer than Garuda felt. They had a right to calm, Pisces generally acknowledged their existence seriously, a prize no other surplice had ever received. “Such thing would require proof.”

Pisces tilted their helmet towards them, drawing their gauntlets in. “No Spectre would be fool enough to leave the Underworld, certainly not all of them. Nor would they have vanished without our notice. The Cathedral has never been this awake, pretty one. Something devastating has happened here. To take your Judges alongside our the Gold Surplices’ rest, what could ever have allowed you to think this was a _choice_ , Griffon?”

Sagittarius, beside them, turned towards Garuda, dipping their head slightly. “Also, the cloths of the Lady of Evil have broken free of their prisons. This I know, for my counterpart has arrived in the Underworld.”

They were met with a silence of terror; and glanced at Pisces, tilting their helmet. “We should be dealing with that. Have you a proper blacksmith, Garuda? They do not have their precious Saints, either, pity that or it would be easier to learn what they know.”

Garuda scanned the crowd. “Balrog,” they said, addressing a young winged Surplice who had somehow managed to bury themself entirely under one of Necromancer’s legs and all four of Druj Nasu’s wings. They raised a gauntlet in acknowledgement.

“I’ve never done it, but I have books on how to do it that a few Spectres wrote back in the day,” they answered. _Typical_ , Garuda mused. “I’ll do my best! Great Luné would never forgive me if I didn’t.”

“Then you have a torturer,” Garuda said, giving Sagittarius a deep nod. They knew better than to give a gold surplice anything less. “It would be best to go now, and bring them under heel before they do something catastrophic. I do not believe anyone needs the reminder that they are not Saints, and may cross the river unassisted.”

Pisces spun on their heel, cape whipping behind them like a blade, and walked out. Sagittarius and Taurus followed them, their hooves clicking against the floor. The door closed behind them.

“Return to the duties of your bearers, all,” Garuda said. “We will send out messengers to teams shortly. Signup sheet for specific trios has been posted outside.”

They watched the crowd leave, some teleporting, some climbing out windows and taking to the skies of the Underworld, but most through the doors; all murmuring uneasily amongst themselves. Garuda took a breath when the majority had left.

“I don’t like those Golds being awake,” they muttered. “Especially if what Pisces implied was true.”

“Fuck me, all twelve of them at once, and no pretty Saints to distract them?” Wyvern asked. “Yeah, I’d rather brave Harpy and that Lady of Evil in the same room and both angry at me than that.” They shook out their scales, beginning to pace. “We need to be worrying about those damned Cloths. How did they get here? They don’t know our ways in.”

“The Pisces cloth would,” Griffon muttered. “Pisces- _agapi_ and Pisces- _sevastó_ of the Holy War previous would have ensured that.”

Garuda twitched a wing in annoyance. The two Pisces saints previous had been a thorn in their side, inching _so close_ to Spectrehood and yet still refusing immortality with a laugh and a charming smile. The elder of the two, Pisces- _agapi_ , as far as Garuda knew had chosen to remain on the ground world with his cloth and accepting the madness that he would only find. His son, Pisces- _sevastó_ , who had stood both with them and against them in life and in death had become… something else, entirely. Neither who would have names in the Underworld, their deaths on the side of Athena had guaranteed that.

And now three cloths were in the Underworld, where they should never have been, having slipped in using the entrance dedicated to Pisces and Dryad, tucked away in a hill governed by some resident dragons.

“I really hope those dragons learned to eat metal,” Garuda muttered. “It would save us a lot of headache.”

“Unlikely,” Wyvern piped up. Before they could continue with an explanation of the exact specifications of a dragon’s natural eating habits made entirely of sexual jokes, Griffon stopped them both.

“I’ll take Druj Nasu and head to the surface,” they said, somewhat quietly. “There’s a taste on the wind east of here that isn’t from the Underworld, or from Sanctuary. I’m not liking that much, I want to take a look into that.”

They left the room, wings sweeping the ground behind them, and Wyvern nodded, following them out and likely to go gather their elite squadron. Garuda swore, an impolite thing for any surplice but Wyvern to do, and scanned the ceiling of the throne room. It was magicked to display the sky above them on the ground world. They traced constellations with the eyes engraved into their mask, wondering. Soon enough, they would meet the cloths in battle, metal against metal, with no flesh or blood to worry about or pain to feel. They dealt in physics, not in pain, and no battle would be over unless someone got shoved in magical lava meant for forging.

Without mortal Spectres or Saints to hold them back, they all would ravage the planet and burn the world above to the ground. Garuda closed their engravings of eyes, and sighed, starlit air filling the empty spaces in their body where Aiacos usually filled at this time.

They opened their eyes again, wondering. Aiacos was gone, yes. But Madeleine had been there before him, filled the empty spaces in Garuda’s breastplate, and had returned to her mortal life after passing her surplice to her apprentice. She was no longer a Spectre, yes. Perhaps she’d been spared. 

Wyvern would take care of business below the world, they always had. Despite their nature, they were _good_ at running the service of death’s forever home. Garuda had a quest to take on. At least this time Madeleine wasn’t likely to be possessed by demons from another afterlife. 

They shifted from bearer form into that of a bird, spreading wings easily, the breeze of Cosmos catching each and every metal feather. Yes, they were unstoppable, they the surplices and all the cloths. But there was always a mortal key.

Garuda just had to find it first. 


	3. but we can fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it's hard to tell who has it worse: the Leo cloth, the Pisces cloth, or the Cancer surplice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I think we're gonna have 8-9 chapters here? I've listed them all out and ordered them, and I've got everything but the actual finale written out. Because finales are _fucking hard_ and there's a reason I hate writing action scenes. I'm trying to spit out as much as possible atm because as twitter informed me earlier today, Camp NaNoWriMo is five fuckin days away and that's a horrifying thought, and I'm not gonna finish this fic before then. I'm absolutely probably gonna go AWOL on this through the entirety of July, so I'm gonna hope I can get chapter four out as well before Monday. At least I got that part all planned out. :p

“I’m just _saying_ , I really think we should just let Gemini Saga be the next Pope, Shion’s getting really old and we all know what happened last time when someone tried to contest that, and I really like Aiolos being alive, you know?” 

The Pisces cloth didn’t even know how they’d gotten roped into this discussion. It was entirely pointless unless Leo actually went and took it up with Aries, who might’ve been able to explain it to Shion - who had been _there_ , anyhow, so it really didn’t make sense. “Sisyphus didn’t die,” they pointed out, ignoring that their voice was still awfully warped in favour of being grateful that it had come back at all. 

“That is true, but it did start the Holy War early, and he was going to be Pope anyway, it was just a test, after all,” Sagittarius chimed in.

Pisces groaned, more of a wail than a sigh. They didn’t know why they bothered with these two. They had been walking for a while now through the darkened stone tunnel, the only light being the glittering gold from their cosmos reflected onto their polished plates. They knew where they were going, they’d made the journey with Lugonis to his brother’s home more times than they had ever counted, and more when Albafica had grown into his father’s position and had finally felt brave enough to ask them to take him back to where he knew he still had living family.

They hated the Underworld with every rivet and every bolt that they had, but Aphrodite’s perfume sent them this way, and as terrified as they were that he too had gone wayward, it was their best bet. 

The engraving on their left leg inched down their thighplate, swirling and blooming another small, violet rosebud. They felt it bloom into a true rose like the way Cardinale traced designs onto their arm with his fingers, but this they could _feel_. Cloths did not feel pain, even shattered and broken on the steps of their temple with their bearer dead with them, Pisces did not feel pain. But this - this felt like dragging a thorn by rosevine through their bearer’s skin, through the metal of their thigh.

The tunnel before them opened up. Leo and Sagittarius, who were still discussing Shion’s successor after Pisces had stopped paying attention, quieted.

“You brought us to the _Underworld_?” Leo demanded from their place atop Sagittarius, riding just behind their hip-shoulders and gloves clinging to the base of their wings. “What the hell, Pisces?”

“Truly, hell,” they agreed in lieu of answering their question. “Let’s go.”

 

Griffon lead the way for Druj Nasu, pausing when appropriate to hold a branch out of the way for the other surplice with their wing. Both of them had retreated into their animalistic forms, Druj Nasu finding it easier when they had the use of all of their limbs and Griffon disliking how _tall_ Minos had somehow grown up to be. They swore he got taller with every reincarnation, shooting up a little more every time he was brought to the Underworld by blood family that hoped he wouldn’t be their problem any more.

Druj Nasu followed them quietly, still a bit sorrowful, still having a difficult time talking. Veronica’s soul had been in the Vaults when the mass kidnapping had occurred, but they hadn’t been quite right ever since they’d returned with his soul in the first place, two hundred years prior. Griffon knew better than to ask- vanishing in the middle of a Holy War and never returning alive was not exactly a behaviour any Surplice would encourage- but simply trusted that they would admit to whatever highly illegal thing they’d been off doing when they were ready to do so. For now, both remained quiet as Griffon lead the way through the brush at the edge of the fifth circle. They came to a bridge, made of nothing more than a few chains and bits of wood, more an idea than an actual pathway across an angry river.

They crossed it easily, and carried on. In the distance, Griffon could see a faint golden light. Lifting their muzzle to the scent, they leaned in, hoping to catch an idea of whatever might dare to glitter such a dangerous colour in the Underworld. Only one Spectre had hair that golden, and that was Wyvern- _foréas_ , who never would have shimmered quite that bright. They stopped dead in the centre of the bridge. Druj Nasu climbed up onto their back, leaning over them to see what the problem was.

Gold cloths. Here. In the Underworld, without bearers, where they should never have been allowed access. Saints threatened the natural order of life and death, and their cloths denied Hades his natural claim on every mortal soul. They fought back when there was no reason to, and obeyed only the will of an insane goddess of war. And they were _here_.

“How many, do you think?” Druj Nasu asked.

“Three,” Griffon answered. “Pisces - they will be horrific to fight again. Sagittarius, they’re heavy, just take to the air and you’ll be able to win that one easy. The third… No, I don’t recognize that one.” They had a vague feeling that they should, but the cloths were nothing more than a glimmer of dangerous gold on the horizon, and they knew that the Pisces surplice had not gone this way.

“We need to split them up,” Druj Nasu muttered. “Think they’ll have issues if I move Minotauros’ forest?”

“Just put it back when you’re done, it took us forever to fix it last time without you,” they answered. “Let’s go meet them there, see about splitting them up and ripping them apart.”

Druj Nasu took to the air and Griffon followed, diving and rising with quick flaps of wings made from starlight and stardust, iron and photons equal. Druj Nasu was a little faster, speeding on ahead to move one of their prisons into the way of Cloths they knew would not be able to find their way out.

The forest flickered into existence before them, the sudden wailing of wind through damned soul-trees echoing from an idea into a present, concrete law. Griffon gave their partner a howl, barely heard above the wind, one that they knew would be recognized. _Watch them from the air_ , they’d said. _I’ll hunt them from the ground._

Griffon dove into the trees, landing on a branch, laughing as they bounded from branch to branch. It wasn’t often they had the opportunity to bound along in animal form, racing through trees they knew. It happened between the Holy Wars, of course - but when had they gotten the opportunity to hunt an enemy while they were at it? The very thought was exhilarating, and the opportunity simply divine.

They let out a howl like the wind, a bare reminder to the cloths - if they even recognized it - that they were not alone in this forest. Griffon didn’t hear any of the cloths, they would not have breathed without their bearers, would not have vocalized their fear. The forest parted for them, space between trees simply opening up like a flower before them to allow them entirely silent travel between the ferns. They dragged their pauldron-tail just a little, just enough that the wind from it whistled through the underbrush. Just enough that a nearby cloth might have heard something living. They dove left, then right, then up a few feet to climb through higher branches and scan for them. The souls trapped within the trees muffled their view, blurring energies they knew to be gold and masking them from prying Surplice eyes. Griffon didn’t have eyes, only the idea of them, but they knew what colour things could be when seen through a bearer’s eyes, Minos’ world a shimmering incandescence of rainbow colour and Victoire’s an array of blues and browns, and knowing what colour things _should_ be was as good as knowing what they _were_.

They almost didn’t notice the mirror, embedded into a tree’s bark like transformation, until the tree in front of them simply didn’t move out of their way. Griffon slammed their paws into the earth, dragging dirt up and sliding through wet earth until coming to a stop. Their own cosmos glowed back at them, the tree simply staying put. Minotauros’ forest did not act like that. It did not put mirrors in their way, and it did not _disobey_.

Griffon gave a roar of questioning, a roar Druj Nasu would know to be a summons and anything else would know to mean danger. They tensed, crouching, and jumped up, spreading their wings until they landed softly on top of the disobedient tree, scanning the horizon of the seemingly-endless forest for their companion. The forest wasn’t truly endless, only looped space around itself into a proper prison. Nothing but something sworn to Hades would ever escape.

Druj Nasu, for their part and the bright starlight they always exuded, was not there.

 

Leo swore five times in a row before crouching back, struggling to keep themself in their bearer form, two legs and armour meant to protect and not to be a person. They spun on their heel, performing two full loops before the thought came to them in terrifying words.

They were entirely alone. A few moments ago they had been quite happily riding on Sagittarius’ back, easing themself into the familiar novelty of their mate’s embrace, one they hadn’t been able to properly appreciate since Hades had sealed them so long ago. But now they were alone, in a pathetically small clearing in what had to be the biggest and darkest forest they’d ever been in. It exuded misery, and death, like it had never known kindness. Brief moments of cosmos seemed to flicker in and out of the trees and the ferns and every plant, and Leo leaned into the edges of the clearing, hoping for anything, any bit of light. Even will o’ the wisps, sworn warriors of the Celtic pantheon who enjoyed bringing new souls to their own Underworlds and Mirrors, would have helped in a place like this.

They paused, resting a gauntlet on the trunk of a tree, and took what Aiolia would’ve called ‘a deep breath’. They had no heartbeat to calm, but they felt a little more grounded. A little closer to human, a little closer to mortal love. They scanned the forest around them once more, focusing not on huge, horrifying trees but on a clearer path. Focusing on being rational and not panicking. Everything around them seemed blurred, like the cosmos around them wasn’t willing to give them a clearer picture. Pisces and Sagittarius had cleanly vanished, as if there had never been any traces of them at all. Not even their scent hung in the starlit air, so cleanly had it been turned to moss and misery.

There were three paths to take. They chose left, what they thought might’ve been east. It was hard to tell what was or wasn’t in any direction. For all they knew, it just went in a looping circle. The path, however, didn’t turn. It kept on straightforward, never turning, never wobbling. They followed it easily, finding the ground wet but somewhat firm. 

The air seemed to thicken the farther they went, and it wasn’t long before they came before a swampy river. The trees had cleared, however. Leo stepped forward towards the river’s edge, hoping to find their way by the stars above that had existed before the forest had appeared. They found the sky, yes, and when they looked to it, hoping for something familiar, hoping for a means of navigating out of the forest—

They were met by nothing but darkness, not a single shining star in sight.

“Well, _fuck_ me silly,” they muttered, words no Cloth would use but they took a slight pleasure in saying anyway simply to hear their own voice. It was comforting, in the way that a starless sky delightfully was not.

Leo glanced left, and then right, scanning up and down the river in hopes of anything that might offer them a solution. Downriver seemed drier, less of a swamp and more a temperate forest. They turned, took a step, leaned back to drag their stuck boot out of the mud, and headed downriver.

 

Leo figured they would be less worried about the entire quest if they were lost in an endless forest that didn’t happen to be in Hades’ Underworld. Even with Aiolia gone, an endless forest was one thing. They were free from their original seal and could properly enjoy it, walk on their own and personally feel the air around them. That was good. That was very good. If they thought about it too hard, they might’ve started skipping down the path in sheer joy of getting to walk on their own two boots. (They did start skipping a little, but would have denied it forever if ever asked.)

The ground dried considerably the farther they went, and the plantlife seemed a little less miserable and more just _silent_ , the silence of respect and a healthy amount of fear. Things seemed to be getting a little brighter, a little greener. Leo looked up, whistling as they skipped down the path, and noticed the faintest trace of stars.

 _Must be getting near the edge of the forest_ , they thought, quite happily so, glad for the thought. The stars were far too faint to tell any constellations, any means of which direction they were going, but it was still good enough to see any stars at all.

The forest abruptly stopped, and the path widened into hewn stones, and before Leo burst a scene they had never seen before, but knew in their core was something that both did and did not belong in the Underworld. They stopped, still as a cloth should be, staring at the sight before them.

The stone path traced from the edge of the forest up through thigh-length grass that had never seen a scythe, to a cracked but still working fountain. A statue of Hades, surplice and all, held a water jug in both arms, his face nothing but a helmet. He stood silent and life-sized, exactly as tall as he’d been before. The jug poured endless water into the fountain below, which gave way to an engraved stone dais encircling it.

Upon closer inspection, they realized that the dais was a clock, a dial of astronomical ideas, each sign of the zodiac around the edges, with Hades and his fountain around the centre. He leaned towards seven o’clock, his jug pouring water towards and illuminating Libra, which glowed with a blue-white moonlight. Leo looked up at the sky again, alarmed, and every inch of them sighed with relief.

There were so many stars it was like the times of the first Holy War, before humanity had crawled far from any river or sea, before the humans of Greece had truly understood fire, or a spool of thread and needle. Every last one was in its place, glittering high above them. Perhaps the forest had been a way out of the Underworld, but what was a statue of Hades doing here?

Leo stepped up to the fountain, leaving the trees behind them, and behind Hades stood something more impressive than a clockwork fountain.

It was a cathedral, and they weren’t sure why anyone would build a cathedral in the Underworld. But the doors were open, and the stained glass on either side showed two warriors - rather, the same warrior - cloaked in gold on the left, and violet on the right. Leo swung around Hades; deeply ignoring the thought that the statue was, like the Athena Cloth, a means of hiding; and walked on inside. They paused to wipe their boots on the stone first before ascending the short steps. It didn’t make any sense to track mud into such a place. Knowing Spectres, and their surplices more so, tracking mud into a place so evidently holy wasn’t a good way to stay in one piece.

Inside the cathedral was a place evidently well-loved, if not well used. There were twelve alcoves down the hall, each with a locked chest underneath the inlays. Stained glass windows had been set between each alcove, depicting scenes that Leo didn’t exactly find beautiful, but seemed a cruel mockery of stained glass that they had seen within their own temple. These were pictures meant for Spectres and their evil armours, not for any sort of holy place.

But, then again, to a Spectre this would probably count as holy. Leo approached the closest alcove, the carving above it a caricature of a four-legged, horned beast, with the curled V shape of Aries set within the beast. In the alcove itself, above the chest and primly on a pedestal, was simply a near-black, violet armour in the form of a ram.

The Aries Surplice. Leo held still, stiller than they ever thought they were capable of otherwise. Terror wreaked through their form, freezing them so completely they might’ve otherwise wondered if the Aquarius Surplice had also arrived.

“Relax, they’re hibernating, and not likely to notice you,” said a voice behind them. Leo spun on their heel.

“ _Lightning Plasma!_ ” they snarled, tossing their gauntlets together in a scream. Their cosmos flared and burst into light, focusing all their power towards whatever had just snuck up on them. When the light faded and they could see, photons vibrating still at the ready around them, they had left a crater in the stairs of the cathedral and two feet from the edge of the crater, a surplice sitting calmly on their back legs.

“Or you could miss me entirely, I suppose,” the surplice muttered. “Really, Leo Cloth, I’m trying to help.” 

Leo backed up from them, towards the Aries surplice, trying to figure out what kind of surplice they even were. Their wings were heavily plated and quite large, and they couldn’t tell if they were a cat or a very strange four-legged bird.

“Who _are_ you?” they asked, genuinely curious. As far as they knew, surplices didn’t _have_ animal forms like cloths did. It wasn’t a stretch to see an Aries surplice in animal form, they were a replica of the real Aries anyway, but this was just new.

“I am the Griffon surplice,” they answered, tone indicating offense. “You should know this. I have beaten you into the ground more times than I care to count.”

“Sorry, I’ve only ever seen you in battle while you’re _wearing someone_ ,” Leo blurted, a little too stunned to say something smarter.

“Great Minos, one would assume. Victoire’s never around for the Holy War, neither is the other three souls I generally end up with. Can you believe it, I got a new bearer a hundred and fifty years ago. Fresh off the soul-generator, first time being a Spectre at all, and they caught my eye and put a fine Judge into the bargain.” Griffon scratched at the back of their helmet with a back leg. Leo was tempted to mirror the action, but still seemed at a loss for words. Last they knew, surplices didn’t think of anything but bloodshed and murder and misery, and this was something new, in a horrible way, and they didn’t like it. Nobody had ever mentioned that surplices could have been alive too, with thoughts and feelings and movements. They’d known that surplices had always had their freedom, like they hadn’t, but they’d never _known_ it.

“Don’t act so surprised,” Griffon muttered. “But I answered a question for you, so you get to answer one for me. Why’re you three even in the Underworld, anyway? I’m pretty sure I know how you got here, doesn’t take a Gold cloth to figure that out.” Griffon paused, as if to consider their thoughts. “Er, no offense.”

“You stole Aiolia!” Leo snapped, stepping forward. The anger rose within them again, offering with it charged lighting photons ready to fire.

“If that were true, wouldn’t I be courting great Minos right now?” they asked, quite mildly. “Don’t play Othello and blame me for something you cannot prove. I’m not a devilish girl nor an angelic one, and I don’t care for heroes.”

Leo wished that Griffon’s words made sense. “You’re talking nonsense, give him back. And give Sagittarius and Pisces back while you’re at it!”

“They’re probably still in Minotauros’ forest, honestly,” Griffon answered. “Druj Nasu and I put that in your way while we figured out what to do with you, except then they vanished, and it’s not like the forest to blur things for me. Your companions aren’t surplices, they’re not getting out of it.”

“Then how did I do it?” Leo demanded. They took a step forward, lashing their tail and trying not to pace. “I got out of the forest and landed here just fine.”

“Maybe there’s something wrong with the forest, which means when I get great Minos back, we’ll have to go fix it. Or maybe we’re onto act two, now that I’ve found an antagonist.” Griffon stretched out their wings, standing up and circling their spot for a moment before sitting back down again. “I mean, if I were writing this play, I’d want a Gold cloth for my antagonist. Pity you just don’t know how to banter. I want a different antagonist.”

“You’re evil,” Leo muttered. “If anyone’s the villain here it’s you.”

“I live here!” Griffon protested, flaring their tail wide. Leo noted, suddenly, that their tail was nothing more than the pauldrons of their bearer form. “You can’t call me a villain in my own castle grounds!”

“Oh, shut up, the lot of you,” came another voice. Leo spun, and Griffon looked up. From a pedestal four alcoves down, a gleaming violet gauntlet swung out. The caricature above the pedestal depicted a crab, with the sign of Cancer neatly etched within it. 

“ _Some_ of us-” the Cancer surplice snarled- “Are trying to sleep. And unless you’re giving me a sobbing human with a mortal heart, I don’t care what your excuse is. Shut the hell up and get out of our cathedral, or I’m going over there and ripping the lot of you apart my-damn-self.”


	4. who's going to stop us now?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Griffon and Leo have a bit more of a chat than they expected, and somehow Leo-the-cloth survives their first encounter with a Gold surplice. Leo-the-surplice can't quite say the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is when I realized I had no idea what the Sagittarius Surplice's personality is. This is also when I realized that I have no idea if it needs a mature warning if it's two metal armours who don't have reproductive systems who're getting it on. They don't get that far, but uh, content warning for some foreplay? Also, y'all might need a guide to pieces of armour at this point. Tassets are your hip protectors, y'all, I just learned that! Gauntlets are gloves, vambraces are forearm parts, pauldrons are shoulder protectors, and a gorget is the metal part around your collarbone and the base of your throat. So we're all clear here~  
> Also, it's really hard to specify every time between X-the-cloth and X-the-surplice, and I'm gonna have to do that a lot, so if the prose is awkward know that I buried myself in this hole. :p

Leo backed up, one terrified step after another, until they almost tripped over Griffon’s tail. The surplice in question swept their tail out of the way and stepped forward, standing onto their hind legs and shifting until they looked like a crueler version of their bearer, their face a metal mask and their flesh body entirely missing. 

“Sorry, Cancer,” Griffon said. “It’s probably best if I take this little cloth out of your room. Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m awake now,” the Cancer surplice grumbled, stepping off the pedestal. They were already in their bearer form, a silver-white cape just like Leo’s falling easily from their back. “You said something about dear Druj Nasu?”

“They were with me, if that’s what you mean. They’re probably still in Minotauros’ forest, but it’s been acting strange. Things won’t move properly, and it’s _blurry_.” Griffon folded their arms, their pauldrons shifting in obvious annoyance. 

“I’ll go fix the stupid forest, then,” they answered, stretching their vambraces out and sweeping past the two into the courtyard. Their symbol within the dais lit up, shining a soft white as they passed, and it faded as they crossed the threshold into the forest. They disappeared within it, and Leo attempted to take another deep breath.

The Cancer Saints were cruel, sure, and the Cancer cloth downright strange, still incapable of proper speech even after Pisces had regained theirs. Leo was pretty sure they wanted to find Aiolia as fast as possible, take him home, and immediately demand a good long bath in the Sagittarius temple. 

Griffon made a noise in their direction that might’ve been a laugh, pressed their wing to Leo’s back, and dragged them out of the cathedral. “Best not tarry, then,” they said. Leo followed, letting Griffon escort them out, tracing the steps the Cancer surplice had taken. They moved down the stairs and into the courtyard, Griffon waving a hand as they passed the crater. Leo watched it heal over seamlessly, as if they’d never made a five-foot-diametre hole in the middle of the stairs. Surprisingly, it wasn’t an illusion - Griffon walked easily over the rebuilt steps, seemingly uncaring.

“The forest calls you, dear little Leo,” they remarked, a laugh in their voice. “It really is corrupting, look at that! All mirrors and no damned souls. The Underworld itself, ah, it does not enjoy the theft of what belongs here.” 

Leo looked into the trees, extending their cosmos, trying to figure out what the surplice was talking about. The forest blurred itself easily- it was difficult to tell where a tree trunk ended and where another began, the exact edge lost in a blur of magical resonance. They could feel out where things were through the natural array and threads of cosmos quite easily, and see things visually through their bearers, but in the Underworld, things seemed almost murky.

“I… don’t get it,” they finally said. “What do you mean, mirrors?”

“They mean that the forest is full of mirrors, as it so clearly is,” another voice answered, musical, a little higher pitched than Griffon’s, and far more confident in themself. Leo knew that voice, and knew it well.

“Pisces Aphrodite…?” they asked, stepping forward and past Griffon, hopeful. Any living human was better than nothing. If Aphrodite had returned, that was good. He would know what had happened to everyone. He would.

They were met with laughter, brutal and blunt and unforgiving. “How brave of you, little Cloth, to so recklessly use the name of a mortal heart that belongs not to you. How rude, really,” the voice answered, and its speaker appeared from the trees. 

Leo was getting really, really sick of surplices walking in and pushing them around. But if they had to expect any surplice, they supposed the Pisces surplice would be that. They’d seen them a few times beforehand on the battlefield, their bearer screaming a name they knew belonged to a Saint now draped in violet.

But they knew well of the last saint to have fallen to the Pisces surplice, and upon his dying breath had asked nothing but their goddess’ graceful forgiveness of the anger within him. Whatever damage this Surplice could cause, it could be reversed.

Leo had watched with a mute sadness in their gut when Regulus had cried, sharing in his agony but having seen it more times than they ever wanted to count. 

“I’m not afraid of you,” they said. “You’re evil, but you can’t hold them, you can’t! You’re not going to get Aphrodite, too!”

The Pisces surplice looked at them, amusement on the starlit air, and lifted the mask pressed into their helmet. It vanished within it, and they walked towards them, closing the distance. With every step their starlight cosmos flickered a little more, adding colour and shape and texture, until before them stood a ghostly Spectre, or rather, a Saint gone wayward. They hadn’t known she’d gone. She’d just disappeared, and never returned.

Pisces ‘Tiffany’ Theophania, of three Holy Wars previous, smiled at them brightly, her short hair hiding under the helmet of her surplice. Leo snarled, lifting their gloves in anger.

“I suppose you have lost your dearest Saints, too,” Tiffany - the Pisces surplice - remarked. “As we have lost our loves. If you expect the Underworld to have them, we do not. Sweet Griffon- _foréas_ is gone, and so are all the rest.”

Leo paused. “Your… Spectres are gone, too?” The heat was gone from their voice, changed to stunned surprise. They hadn’t expected that one at all, and they didn’t like causing more trouble than it was worth. Even if they were enemies, marching into the Underworld demanding something the surplices didn’t have was awfully rude, and entirely uncalled for. 

“Obviously, otherwise I would be with great Minos at the moment,” Griffon replied. “He gets taller every Holy War, I don’t get it. And he still never comes with new poetry for me to study, to labour over, to learn the skills of new wordsmiths.”

“He is usually three, my Griffon,” Pisces answered, Tiffany’s ghost rolling her eyes before fading into starlit mist. “I do not expect him to be literate at that age. The point remains… Young Leo, if indeed you are only looking for that bearer of yours…”

“Aiolia!”

“Yes, the Leo Saint. He is not mine, do not ask me to use his name,” Pisces continued. “If indeed he is yours, and all you are looking for, then I see no reason to allow you to quest alone. Whatever has your bearer likely has our loves, and if you are alone, you are simply that much easier to overpower and silence.”

The starlit air surrounding the surplice expanded, slowly, then all at once. Leo could taste the salt of tears and the waters of drowning, the misty flower-scent engulfing them, choking their own pathways to the powers of the stars.

“Okay, okay, I get it,” they said, waving away Pisces’ powers from their body. “You want to help, I guess. That’s fine. So long as you don’t hurt my Aiolia.”

“I would not dream of it, he is not mine, I do not care,” Pisces answered. “And all of Griffon’s bearers have been of Aries. You need not worry. We would best track down your companions, though.”

They turned on their heel, to head into the forest again, and then stopped. “Griff, my sweet, what is _that_?”

Leo moved forward, leaning to look over their shoulder. From the bushes were several pairs of glowing eyes. Normal animals usually didn’t do that. _Does the Underworld have livestock…?_ they wondered, toying with the idea of magic dead animals.

“Uhhhhh, in the words of several great poets,” Griffon started, “Run.”

Leo spun on their heel at a forty-five degree angle, and sprinted towards the first pathway they saw.

 

Tonight, in the wry dusk of the Underworld, was quite the moondawn to take a walk in Minotauros’ forest. Tonight was a good night for a proper hunt. Three Gold cloths, all unaware, all a little scared, and one a little wayward. Easy prey, good prey. Prey worth sinking sparkling violet fangs into. Right now, though, they had an easy target. Taurus, they thought, or maybe Capricorn. Whichever cloth this was, they had hooves and four legs, and had to be carrying quite the horns on their head, bumping them into every tree and every branch, running a little faster, tripping a little more.

They were angering the prisoners, of course, slamming into them every few seconds. It didn’t surprise them, then, when those same trees extended branches for them to run on, forming a nice bridge across the trees, a few feet above their prey’s helmet. Any damned soul hated all the denizens of the Underworld, everyone who had earned their proper place in someone else’s misery. But those same souls hated intruders more, stirring them from their slumber, making a racket and slamming into them, and for that, they would allow any true citizen to climb on them to hunt down the intruder and eliminate them.

The trees seemed unwilling to pull apart into a proper clearing, to shuffle around the idea of linear space to form a clearing and an impassable wall. They could see the reflection of their cosmos in every tree, like they’d been polished mirror bright, like they’d been incapable of moving their roots somewhere else.

The Leo Surplice ascended a couple of branches, a snarl of delight upon their mask, following the Gold cloth as easy as it was to imagine the kill. Trespassing was wrong, simple as that, and this cloth followed the Lady of Evil, which was even worse. And those who broke the rules, those who defied justice, well, they got exactly what they deserved. It was simply not right for anyone to defy their great lord of death - it was only the natural order of things, and immortality, such as it was, was to ask him to not take his due.

They slipped amongst the branches, climbing higher and higher, their metal claws barely gracing the bark. They fit in well against the dark blues and painful burgundies of the wood, a deep violet against the sky. Their prey, the Gold cloth ahead that stood out like an extra bolt in their hip, kept running, galloping as fast as their boots would carry them.

Even for a cloth, they weren’t all that fast. Leo wondered why, since last they’d checked - had it really been over two thousand years since they’d last had a bearer? - cloths could run quite fast if they wanted to.

Their prey tripped, and fell front first with a yell into the mud. Leo let out a snarl and jumped from the branches, pouncing, hoping to get a bite to the core in one clean shot. They were met with an arrow through their mouth. It caught their throat, their mouth suddenly full of an intrusion they didn’t want. They spat it out, growling, shaking their violet mane one way and to the other.

“L-Leo-?” the cloth blurted, golden boots in a jumble on the ground and an arrow notched into a bow in their gloves, their helmet open, without even a mask to display a face. Leo stared in disbelief at what was underneath their claws, what was unmistakeably the Sagittarius Cloth.

No Sagittarius was prey. Leo knew that, and that put themself in the wrong, and that was not allowed to stand. Even worse, no Cloth was allowed to look so much like the real Sagittarius. That, too, was not allowed to stand.

“I’m the _real_ Leo,” they said, half a snarl still on their muzzle. “You’re not supposed to try and hurt me, you know better than that! You know that’s wrong.” They’d apologize when Sagittarius did, simple as that.

“L-Leo… What _happened_ to you?” Sagittarius whispered, not moving, their voice full of horror and more than a little fear. “Out of everyone… No… You _wouldn’t_ fall wayward, you wouldn’t swear yourself to him, you can’t be--!”

“I’ve been sworn to him forever, you should know that!” Leo answered, still snarling. They stood up and released the cloth, shaking the mud off of their metal fur. What this Sagittarius was thinking, they didn’t know. “He’s better than any other god, and at least he knows justice. I’ve told you before you should come with.”

Sagittarius stumbled onto their front boots, still crouching. They let go of their bow, letting it and their arrow fall to the ground. “No… Leo, you know better!” They climbed to their boots, all four of them, stepped forward for what was quite brave of them, scooped the Leo surplice up into their arms, and pressed their helmet into Leo’s muzzle, letting them invade the airspace within it.

Leo started to yell in anger, but they could smell nothing but Sagittarius’ cosmos scent, all starlight air of cold metal and pine, of exactly what the howl of a wolf at moondawn would smell like. They reached up with a paw to hang onto Sagittarius’ shoulder, any protest they might have had about being picked up fading in their core. They relaxed their sight, leaning into the golden metal, pressing their face a little more into Sagittarius’ helmet.

The cloth in question leaned back a bit, breaking their contact. “You need to come back,” they said, their voice heavy with sorrow and… something else, that Leo didn’t recognize by name. “I know you know better than this, Leo.”

“I really don’t know better than _this_ ,” Leo disagreed, shifting their form to open the front of their helmet, to display what would’ve been the face of their bearer, and pressed their helmet to the cloth’s. Their boots shifted to rest easier in Sagittarius’ gauntlets, letting themself be carried bridal-style, their own gauntlets slipping around their shoulders, easily hanging onto the base of their wings.

Sagittarius, for their part, made no reply, only pulled them closer. Starlit cosmos pressed itself against that of the other armour, before falling apart and melting together. Two thousand years since they’d been awake, two thousand years since they’d felt the yearning for another being, living or cosmos-powered, two thousand years since the Leo surplice had been this close to anyone at all. The Sagittarius cloth tasted _good_ , and every star within them sparkled. When the glove of the cloth traced the tassets of their hips, they relaxed, and took no surprise when that glove found its way between the riveted joints and to the air within.

Leo pulled away, some instinct alarming them to something in the area, something wrong with the forest - something that shouldn’t have been in the Underworld at all.

“What’s wrong…?” the Sagittarius cloth asked, their voice soft, heavy with something that wasn’t quite sadness. 

“Something’s wrong with the forest,” Leo said, pulling their boots to the ground. “We should go check that out. I- I don’t know what it is.”

They were interrupted by a _wail_ , a primal noise of terror. Leo stood up, violet lightning at the ready. Sagittarius climbed to their hooves, reaching for the bow they’d discarded and a spare arrow stuffed in their back boot. The bushes in front of them, reflective, showing them only themselves and not what they hid, rustled.

From them burst another sparkling golden Cloth, all scales and gold and wrapped in violet engravings. Their white cape had been torn, barely scraps on their shoulders, and they scrambled from the bush and across the clearing, directly into a tree, as if trying to get away. Sagittarius, beside Leo, gave a horrified noise, staring intently at the violet engravings.

The bush rustled again, and from it burst a familiar face, the Pisces Surplice wrapped in rainbow roses and boiling with rage.

Pisces-the-cloth let out a howl of terror, all warped and _corrupted_ and faithless, scrambling against the tree they’d collided with, as if trying to get away. Pisces-the-surplice snarled, laughter and white-hot rage on their starlit mist, advancing towards them.

“Y-you took him; you se- seduced him; you hurt him--!” Pisces-the-cloth screamed, their voice as corrupted as they looked, the violet swirling across their helmet and the centre of their chest.

“He was _mine_ , he always should have been, you stole him and you broke him and I am always the one who fixes what you break, and he hated me for it, I will kill you and put an end to this-” Pisces-the-surplice screamed in return, their voice crystalline clear, with none of their usual musical whimsy. Leo put a hand in front of the Sagittarius cloth, pushing them back, stepping between them. They knew better. They knew how this fight would end. Against pain a cloth would ignore, but against corruption from Hades’ original curse, there was nothing the cloth could do. Against their counterpart, the Pisces surplice who had always been the Gold Surplices’ leader in every way, who could stand down that great Lady of Evil, look her in the eye and tell her ‘ _you ain’t shit, you insolent, ungrateful little child-’_ , no, that cloth had no chance in hell.

“There’s two fucking Pisces,” Sagittarius whispered. “Why is there two of them.” It wasn’t a question so much as a statement, and it occurred to Leo exactly what the cloth had been talking about earlier, why they’d kissed them and shoved their glove in their tassets in the first place.

“Pisces Cloth, like you, and Pisces Surplice, like me,” Leo hissed back. “Don’t engage them. You don’t want to get between the Pisces Surplice and whatever they want dead.” 

“You’re… You’re a _surplice_?” the Sagittarius cloth demanded, backing away. “You’re not Leo at all!” They raised their bow, arrow notched, and pointed it at Leo’s gorget, just below where their throat might’ve been.

“I am the Leo surplice, sweet Sagittarius,” they answered. “I have never been anything but. If you defected, if you corrupted like that dear Cloth is trying not to, you could be with me always.”

“I’d rather die,” Sagittarius hissed, and Leo felt their intoxicating power rise, all pine and wolf and running for freedom, and concentrate within their arrow.

The Pisces cloth behind them, screamed so shrill and warped that they stopped long enough to turn. The Pisces surplice had them pinned, a prayer for the departed on the starlit air, misery in their cosmos mist and the forest reflecting.

Leo didn’t think the situation could go more awry. Something hit them, hard. They fell quite suddenly to the ground, kicking and clawing and lighting at the tips of their gauntlets at what was a golden mirror-image, in all the wrong ways.

“Duck, Leo,” said a familiar voice, and they did. Three arrows, all violet and glowing with blackened rage, spun past them, driving themselves into the armour of their counterpart.

The Sagittarius surplice, all blackened anger and contempt, stood tall in the middle of the clearing, bow full of arrows pointed at a terrified Leo cloth. 

The two Sagittariuses looked at each other, the cloth in stunned silence and the surplice of mild boredom. The two Leos spared a glance at each other, one full of arrows and one delighted to be in the same clearing as _two_ pretty surplices. The twin Pisces had locked cosmos, so close and never touching, a battle of silent wills on who got to survive.

_What a lovely day_ , the Leo surplice mused. _Oh, I just love exacting justice._


	5. find me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, hatred requires a little explanation. Corruption, though, requires none at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahaha sorry I've been out for two months, I got hit by a car last week and my leg is broken in five places. Wrote this in the hospital, hope it's good. Next chapter has three lines of plot (compared to like, 20 for every other chapter) so I'll be winging that. :p Enjoy!

The Leo Cloth had not wanted to be in this position. They’d run through the forest as fast as possible, zigzagging whenever they got the chance. Whatever was on their tail was large and howling and ran too hard to have less than four legs. They had to lose them, as fast as possible.

Worse, they couldn’t see their way. Physical touch was not their favourite way to get around, and every corner just felt like circles. They were sure the forest was just turning them around every time, and it didn’t matter how many left or right turns they made. They passed the same fallen tree five times. Left, right, right, left, straight through, right-

A new exit. They hadn’t seen these four trees before, slightly less reflective. A wild laugh escaped them and they charged between them. The grass below their boots brushed against their ankles, the tickling feeling entirely lost on them against the warm, starlit metal. A clearing opened up before them, almost perfectly circular, and no way out. A dead end.

They hissed and shifted to their bearer form, scaling the nearest tree, gauntlets still in lion form for the claws. Perhaps the treetops would help them find their way out-

Pain ruptured through them, the feeling so alien they screamed. The ground, when they hit it, didn’t hurt as much as their gauntlet suddenly did. They dared to feel for it, discovering an arrow laced with violet starlight piercing straight through it. Changing form might cause it to fall out- their breath came in shallow huffs of shining air. Leo struggled to their boots again, lightning at the ready in their uninjured glove.

“I would stay exactly where you are, if I were you,” growled an all-too-familiar voice behind them, familiar gentleness replaced by uncaring cruelty. Leo turned on their heel, slowly, unsure, knowing exactly what they were going to find. It was over. They knew that in the core of their starlight.

The Sagittarius Surplice stood regal before them, bow notched with three arrows, coursing with power. Leo had known their cloth counterpart - courted them, loved them, swore eternity by their side as solidly as the Lady Athena - well enough to know exactly what their surplice counterpart would be like. Cruelty and kindness, living corpses in motion, emotion suppressed until it burned into raw, bloody hatred. Leo knew they cared. They cared so much that they no longer felt any of it.

Leo raised their gauntlets in quiet surrender. Sagittarius stepped towards them, wary, confident, without lowering the bow. Their breath was silent, like a true cloth, watching the surplice, one step, two step, three step.

“ _Lightning Plasma_ ,” they hissed, and dove between Sagittarius’ legs as the power tipped them out of balance. They shifted into full lion form and bolted for the pathway out.

Scrambled running had gotten them nothing but more arrows in their metal, slowing them down, pain stabbing up their limbs and into their core, numbing them to the ground so much they may as well not have been moving at all. They kept running, the ground numb if it was there at all, slamming into every tree and pushing forwards.

They leapt into a clearing, tumbling into something harder than evil tree bark, rolling helmet over boots before coming to rest on the ground they could barely feel.

They heard the Sagittarius Surplice command, “Duck, Leo,” and they forced their helmet into the ground. It didn’t matter. Another three arrows slammed into their tassets, piercing deep. The pain ruptured through their airspace, numbing them even more. They heard Sagittarius stop moving, and all was silence except for the sheer supernova of rage to their left. Leo dared to raise their helmet to see.

Pisces, their friend, pinned to the ground by rainbow, blackened roses and their own counterpart. Sagittarius, the real Sagittarius, standing a few feet away, covered in mud and holding as still as terror, as still as metal. Below Leo’s hind legs, their own counterpart, in bearer form and starlight tasting like joy.

Leo’s breath came ragged, trying to replenish damaged cosmos with each shaky breath. Their counterpart climbed to their boots and dusted themself off nonchalantly.

The trees seemed to glow - was that their imagination? They flickered, appearing different, appearing identical, they suddenly weren’t sure if they were alone or not, if the starlight around them wasn’t just their own emotions-

They could taste the attack just before they felt it. Whatever had just been screamed was unintelligible, nothing more than a “ _HYAH!_ ” before everything slammed to the ground. A wave of cosmos, blue as the sunset sky, deep indigo and familiar, faithful, washed over them. It felt like the sea at Sanctuary, it felt like death, the tide of starlight washed over them and they felt it all.

Leo slowly moved to their paws, discovering the arrows were gone, the ground clear and steady below them. They raised their muzzle.

All three of the surplices had been forced to the ground, stunned for just a moment. Pisces scrambled to their own boots, their white cape torn to pieces and leaking violet corruption as if they no longer believed in the Lady Athena. “Cancer,” they whispered, their melodic voice broken now not by rage but by sorrow.

The Cancer Cloth, bearer form on two boots, responded with nothing but a wail and a shrug. _Sorry I’m late_ , the wail meant, and they walked forward towards the three surplices. In the reflected glow of cosmos, Leo noted the violet swirls of corruption tracing Cancer’s metal body like a lover’s touch. Their cosmos clenched in their gut.

Cancer wailed again, louder this time, helmet to the sky as if calling for someone. _Cut it out, Druj Nasu, this isn’t helping_ , they called, their voice nothing but a scream on the winds.

The air shimmered with power, the trees glowing brighter still. Leo tasted grief on those stars, tasted memory. A thousand moments, a thousand promises, death on every one and laughter somewhere in the background. For a moment, Leo saw Ilias, kneeling before a Spectre whose name they refused to ever say, a smile on his face.

They tensed, shutting out the world, and when they felt the shimmering fade, suddenly, the forest appeared in perfect clarity.

It was a clearing, yes, and four trees battered from the surplices. But they were not much more than trees, each holding a still-living soul in endless torment. The ground was solid and the plants full of mourning, but it was a forest nonetheless.

A surplice fell neatly into the centre of the clearing, their boots barely missing Leo’s tail. Their helmet resembled some sort of insect, and their wings looked… broken, almost. Leo had never seen them before, but trusted that this was the Druj Nasu that Cancer had called - a corpse demon, after all.

Druj Nasu swept over to Cancer, holding out their hands. Cancer went with a shriek of a laugh, Druj Nasu sweeping them off their boots and pressing their helmets together. Violet swirls curled down their breastplate, wandering their way down them further.

Leo felt they had quite the idea exactly what had happened to Pisces.

“Neither of you believe in Lady Athena anymore,” they whispered, their voice hoarse still, distant pain shuddering through them.

“What?” Cancer asked, voice broken but strong, still hanging bridal-style in the arms of a surplice Leo decided they hated. That wasn’t _right_ , Cancer couldn’t just betray them for Hades, especially not through this ugly mechanism of scrap metal.

“That’s why you’re turning into a surplice,” they continued, rising slowly with more conviction to their paws, their tail brushing the ground for balance. “You don’t believe in her anymore. You’re breaking your oath.”

“Aren’t we all?” the Pisces cloth retorted, a gauntlet on the nearest tree, their boots shaking as if they were debating falling over. “Those damn Spectres, thinking they can save them, thinking they can _help_ the lessons my bearers learn…” They stepped forward towards Leo, who recoiled, inching towards the true Sagittarius who was still struggling to move against the stunned, unconscious Leo Surplice. 

Their counterpart, Pisces-the-surplice, burst out laughing, rising easily, starlight flickering in and out of them like the most natural thing of all. “You are mad at Dryad and I, little counterpart,” they snarled, their voice more musical and whimsical than before, like they didn’t care at all. “We found it. We found out how to save them from your bonds, the vows they cannot break on their own. We found it and you took them back regardless, you took Agapi, you took my little one, and yet you hate us for it.”

Cancer let loose another wail and both of the Pisces fell to the ground, struggling, failing to stay standing. Leo felt nothing but a soothing tide wash over them, and the arrow in their gauntlet faded. 

“Enough,” Cancer whispered, voice still broken but slightly clearer. “There’s no point to this. Let’s just find the ones we have now.” Druj Nasu suddenly put them down. Leo watched them, slowly moving towards Sagittarius, who gratefully rested their helmet on Leo’s hind legs. They wrapped their tail around them, watching the surplice inch towards the edge of the clearing.

“The wolves are back,” they remarked. “I don’t know why they’re here in my forest. They weren’t a few hours ago.”

A wail split the sky and the trees in front of them bent away, as if to make room for whatever was coming through. Leo stood, lion form, standing with a snarl between the opened trees and Sagittarius, who fell to the ground rasping and not getting up.

They noted the jet-black locks of cosmos-spiked hair first, then the ragged breath, then the starlight like a galaxy in itself, then the form the newest arrival was in. They knew him like they knew fear, like they knew justice and hatred.

His form was shaky, flickering, like he wasn’t real. He raised his head to them, his skin pale and dirtied and his pale eyes wide, white all the way around the edges. “You have to go,” Hades whispered, his voice as shaky as his form, but raw and clear.

Two of the four surplices jumped to his aid immediately, Druj Nasu holding his waist and Pisces catching his shoulders, lifting him enough to stand. “Who has them all?” the Pisces surplice asked.

“Nemesis,” Hades answered, his tunic more ripped than Leo had thought. The goddess of revenge - Leo didn’t know why she would get involved.

“All of them? The Spectres and the Saints?” Leo asked. Hades nodded, leaning on his two aids, his legs entirely failing him.

“Even Griffon- _foréas_?” the Pisces surplice added, their tone cautious. Hades nodded once more.

“All of them,” he whispered. “You need to go, all of you.” He leaned his head on the Pisces surplice’s breastplate, his eyes closing. Something howled from behind them, where Hades had appeared. The two surplices moved him closer to the centre. Leo’s counterpart still lay stunned on the ground, the eye-carvings in their muzzle still closed. The Sagittarius surplice remained the same. Leo reached for their bow and moved it to the other side of them, preferring not to be shot again.

The howls climbed closer to them. Their volume rising, Leo’s starlight cold in their airspace as the sound echoed. The ground shifted; shaking, as though something large was approaching. A wave of something washed over them again, nothing like Cancer’s healing spell and everything like misery burning with agony, like sorrow for a bearer too young to die in a war they’d forgotten the reason for.

The trees bended and the howls burst forward, a pack of wolves too many to count snarling and forcing their way through the brush. A flash of violet passed Leo’s vision and they saw their counterpart, sparkling with lavender lightning and snarling.

“You don’t get our Lord of Darkness,” they hissed, raising more Cosmos than Leo realized either of them could had. The pack only charged towards them, swarming the clearing. Leo heard a scream that must’ve been Hades. They stood, raising protons to their command. Their counterpart shoved them aside. “ _Zodiac Clamation,_ ” the Leo Surplice snarled, launching themself toward the wolves.

“ _Leo!_ ” Sagittarius gasped, the real, golden Sagittarius, grabbing their bow and galloping towards the surplice that looked so much like their partner. “ _Chiron’s Light_!” They charged forward before the Leo Cloth could react, and the intertwined light of both faded within the wolf pack.

The wolves surrounded them, overriding them, their many paws digging in over Leo’s metal. “ _Lightning Crown!_ ” they screamed. The light faded within the pack’s fur, as if it had done nothing at all.

A doubled yell of “ _Twin Starlight Rose!_ ” echoed through the air and Leo found themself flying. The wind whipped past them and they were pushed through the depths of fur, coming to stop against a tree as they slammed into it. They didn’t feel any fur as they went down. They opened their eyes, their vision fuzzy but clearing.

The Pisces twins - cloth and surplice - stood side by side with both gauntlets clasped, helmets together in an almost-kiss and identical white capes whipping in the swirling wind, their wrists and gloves tied together by roses that seemed made out of starlight itself. The clearing was empty of wolves but tasted of recent death. The clearing’s edge tasted of a whirlpool, all salt and roses and unforgiving sea.

Leo did a quick headcount. Pisces, evil-Pisces, evil-Sagittarius, Cancer, Druj-Nasu-who-is-evil. No sign of wolves, Hades, or their counterpart, or…

_No_.

A single golden arrow rested on the ground near where the wolves had arrived. There was no other indication that the Sagittarius cloth had ever been there. Leo scrambled towards it, ignoring cracked boots and vambraces, picking up the arrow and sniffing the wind for any trace of them.

They were gone.

“We’ll gather an army, see who’s not dead yet from both sides,” Cancer said, quietly. “You four are the best we’ve got. Pisces twins, you’re overpowered and nearest mortal, Sagittarius, you’re long range, Leo, you’re a tracker… You should scout ahead hunt down Nemesis before she kills anyone else. We’ll find you backup and follow you once we’ve got something.”

Leo didn’t answer. The world was already over.

The Sagittarius surplice struggled to their hooves, one glove on a tree trunk. “We’ll do what we can. I’m not… She _can’t_ get away with this.”

Neither of the Pisces twins responded, most of their energy into their _Twin Starlight Rose_ , protecting the clearing from any more of Nemesis’ wolves. But there was a flicker, indicating their acknowledgement.

Druj Nasu scooped Cancer up again into their arms, raising their wings. “Then good luck,” they said, and took off into the air, above the Pisces twins’ protection.

Leo said nothing at all, clinging to the golden arrow. Nothing else mattered.


	6. the great escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leo has been having a very bad day. Pisces can sympathize.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I can say two things here: this chapter isn't as long as I planned since it was a decent place to end the chapter, but hey, at least I'm not literally writing on hydromorphone. :p (Which, for those who don't recognize the name, is morphine basically on steroids, and is a heavy-duty painkiller.) We are inching closer towards the finale! I'm thinking three more chapters, plus an epilogue? I'm aiming for a nice, even ten chapters. Which means the next chapter needs to actually be two chapters, so I should be able to make that work out all right. Anyhow, let's get right down to business! Here we are! :D

The Sagittarius surplice lead them out of the forest, Leo dragging their feet to stay beside them and the Pisces twins taking up the rear, holding their whirlpool-like barrier around them, occasionally refreshed by exhausted-sounding mutters of ‘ _Twin Starlight Rose_ ,’ like neither of them wanted to actually hold up the barrier but felt obligated to. They held gauntlets the entire way, starlight tasting resigned and with so much anger it screamed.

Leo clung to the single golden arrow within their gauntlet. It wasn’t like a bearer’s death. Those they were always prepared for, knew not to get too attached for the short time they would have together. (They still adored their bearers, of course. But a mortal’s years could pass like moments to them, and they were never near long enough. They cherished them, yes, but it wasn’t quite _love_. There was never enough time for that, not in war.) Sagittarius had been by their side for millennia. The other Gold Cloths had laughed and jeered at their romance, helmets shaking as they courted each other and finally dragged everyone into what they thought was an official ceremony. The Athena Cloth herself had joined in the festivities, laughing like she found it all charming.

But that had been before Hades had seen their spirits. Maybe it was because of them that he’d been so angry. They remembered his words like it was yesterday, like it wasn’t millennia. _“They who should mimic my Surplice army should find themselves in prisons of their own metal flesh under the chains of the warrior goddess. Should they awaken to their senses, let them come. Should they stand resilient, let them burn in their own confinement. You brought this on yourself, Athena, so let your subjects live with your mistakes.”_

They felt the pressure of a glove on their shoulder, starlight slightly chilly to the metal. Leo looked up, fingers curling around the arrow. The Sagittarius surplice was looking down at them, regarding them with an air that wasn’t quite pity, something deeper, more complex. “Don’t,” they said, quietly, gently, their voice a soft sorrow. “It’s not worth obsessing over. Just one boot in front of the other. We’ll deal with the fallout when there aren’t lives on the line.”

They wanted to choke out a reply, wanted to protest and try to explain that it didn’t matter, the real Sagittarius was _gone_ and they were their everything, but the surplice wouldn’t have listened and the words just weren’t making it into sound. Sagittarius sighed, and slipped their vambraces around them. Leo didn’t climb up on their back, but let themself be lifted up onto them anyway, unwilling to go with but couldn’t bring themself to say no.

“Can you smell the way the wolves went?” they asked, softly, resting their gauntlets on Leo’s thighplates still. It was a cruel parody, but it still felt so familiar… Leo tucked the real Sagittarius’ arrow into their breastplate, and pushed the gloves of the surplice off of them. 

“That way,” they answered, as bravely as they could and far more than they felt, pointing to their right a bit. Sagittarius turned into that direction, glancing at the Pisces twins, who were still following and still giving off a starlit flavour of absolutely hating every moment of this.

“Let’s go, then. No time to waste,” Sagittarius said, and took off in a gallop. Leo hoped Pisces and evil-Pisces would follow.

 

The forest broke away not long after they started riding, Sagittarius crossing a bridge made of little more than a few wooden planks and chains, the whirlpool following them, Leo pulling the arrow out of their breastplate to hold it, to see it, to know there was some trace of Sagittarius left, holding onto the evil one’s shoulder as they rode. If they had a bearer right now, his eyes would surely be sobbing, and he wouldn’t know why, and it didn’t matter.

The landscape blurred around them, perhaps more clear if they’d bothered to pay attention. Sagittarius slowed after what seemed like an hour or two, maybe days to a human’s perception, maybe merely moments and their misery had prolonged the journey, and soon they were walking down the main street of what seemed a ghost city, pristine and lived in but utterly abandoned.

Leo noticed the flutter of curtains behind one window, the flickering glow of candles hidden behind fabric. They breathed in, focusing, drawing their senses to the ley lines and riddled interferences of stars all around them. No, they were mistaken - the city was abandoned from humans, but there were still living beings within it, watching, waiting, judging all they saw from behind those doors.

Surplices, they hoped, that wouldn’t attack them if they were in the arms of two Gold Surplices, who they knew were set apart in the Underworld.

“Are they going to attack us?” Leo whispered, watching the flicker of someone who clearly just dove into an alleyway to avoid being seen.

“No,” one of the Pisces twins answered. Leo glanced back, finding that it was actually the Pisces cloth who had responded. “They are as worried as you or I. They would see no reason to harm us at the moment, we are with armours they do not trust or like, but bend a knee to anyway. This is Dis, we are not far from Heinstein Castle itself. Most Spectres live here, as I understand it.”

“If they want to,” Sagittarius contributed. “The Judges have their own temples, and sometimes their lieutenants and favourites live with them. This is where the servants tend to live, and those who are kept around. Think of this like the village near your Sanctuary. Some of our Spectres live here if they want to, but there are other places they can sleep if they prefer.”

“Are we far?” Leo asked, daring to trust their own voice again. They’d passed a few more blocks, Surplices still hiding within the buildings and alleyways, flickers of movement implied their watching of the travellers.

“No,” Sagittarius confirmed, reaching up to stroke their thighplate again. Leo pushed them away again. “I am trying to help, little one… You are sad.”

“I don’t want your help,” they snapped, voice quiet but sharp. “I don’t want your help at _all._ ” They shifted and climbed off of them, choosing to walk on the other side of the Pisces twins. The Sagittarius surplice all but recoiled, cosmos tasting like supernovas and wolf’s blood and wounded, and retreated behind the Pisces surplice, wings drawn tight against their upper back. Leo marched on ahead. They could taste the wolves of Nemesis up ahead, stark against the silhouette of Heinstein Castle. They knew the name of the place fairly well, it had been more than once they’d dove down into the Underworld hoping to finish Hades off. It had never worked, but they were vaguely familiar with where they were.

They approached the gates of Dis and passed through, the surplice standing guard atop the open doors allowing them to pass without a comment. They too were in animal form, and Leo could not have guessed who they might have been. Perhaps surplices and cloths were more similar than they’d realized…

No. It was best not to think about it. They couldn’t. Not so soon after losing Sagittarius. They kept walking, helmet down, staying in their bearer form so they could hold their arrow and still walk. The moment replayed in their mind like the home movies Aiolia and Aiolos had tried to make- their counterpart, the Leo surplice, diving into the wolves with a rage to protect their god, and Sagittarius diving in after them, calling their name, seeing not the surplice but _Leo_ , any version of them, trying to protect and keep safe and love like they always had--

Leo stifled a noise of agony. It didn’t help to cry, and even if they did, Pisces would be angry with them. Both the Pisces twins were already angry, the cosmos between them like red giant stars ready to explode, a minefield of starlight and rage in what seemed blurred by the violet gleaming on the Pisces cloth’s body, all over them, like they no longer believed in Athena or even their surroundings. They seemed as fogged as Leo felt, like none of it was real.

But it was. They knew it was. They were walking through the Underworld’s prisons where the Spectres held the damned human souls and they were walking alongside their friend Pisces, who was slowly being dragged into their own insanity and rage and turning into a surplice, a cruel mockery of their dead lover who was acting like Leo had actually _hurt_ them with their words, and a surplice almost as powerful as Athena herself whose starlight still seemed dangerously close to falling apart; seeking a goddess of revenge who had never previously shown interest in this war, hoping to rescue two armies’ worth of humans who didn’t deserve to have been taken in the first place, and all they had to keep themself from falling apart was a single golden arrow.

It was real, and it was painful, and Athena couldn’t have known about this, otherwise she would have saved Sagittarius. The thought occurred to them like a dagger in the ribs- why hadn’t Athena come? Maybe she was too busy preparing her new vessel, but that couldn’t have taken all her energy, she was a goddess, but Sagittarius was gone, and they weren’t coming back.

Something caught their chest, sharp and unforgiving agony bloomed from them. They cried out, their legs suddenly too weak to hold them upright, and they fell, the pain pulsing through their airspace like it had any right to be there. They didn’t feel the ground when they hit it, but there were stars above them and they could hear something like yelling; _Athena, oh, Athena, where are you under stars like these?_ they wondered vaguely through the pain, the sharp agony swirling across their chest and driving out any other feeling. The stars seemed to blur above them, like the world was turning without them. They blurred so much that they seemed to fade into almost-static.

“Leo.”

The voice seemed clearer than crystal, clearer than stars. They tried to raise their helmet, but they couldn’t, the pain was so intense.

“Leo.”

This voice… They knew this voice. No face could be put to it, no smile or scent or starlight, but it was there nonetheless. Who was it that was calling them..? They tried to concentrate, to remember the voice, but the pain…

“ _Leo!_ ” Something gold erupted into their vision, blocking out the stars. The pain in their chest doubled, and they screamed out, barely aware of their own voice, consumed by the pain. Their vision cleared, just a little, and the pain slowly receded. The helmet above them belong to Pisces, violet swirls across their face slowly receding with Leo’s pain.

Pisces slipped a gauntlet behind their back, slowly helping them sit back up. They didn’t remember hitting the ground, but they were somehow not on their feet. They struggled to take a breath, then another, feeling the pain fade away.

 _What happened…?_ they tried to ask, and all that came out of them was a wail, static like a radio without a signal on a night when Aiolia needed to hear the music, miserable like Gemini’s screeches back in Sanctuary, warped like Pisces’ grief over bearers dead three hundred years ago and maybe a few hours.

Pisces held them, a gauntlet supporting their back and another on their chest. They heard them ask them to breathe, to just breathe, their melodic voice seemingly distant, something blocking the sound from really reaching them. Leo lifted their own gauntlets, hoping to hold onto them, noticing the arrow still held in their right glove, perfect and pristine and shimmering with starlight.

Sagittarius… They focused on the arrow, focused on its sharp point and gleaming shaft and the thin feathered tip for the physics needed to fly straight. The world around them came to clarity around the arrow, Pisces’ soothing voice seeming closer and closer, until it was softly right beside them, counting their breaths and murmuring reassurances.

They pulled the arrow close to their chest, keeping their vision locked onto it, resting it atop their breastplate. Then they registered their breastplate, and nearly dropped the arrow.

Another scream ripped itself from their helmet at the violet swirl across their breastplate. They stuffed Sagittarius’ arrow in their boot, gloves turning to paws and claws starting to grasp at their chest, trying to claw off the violet corruption. They didn’t even feel the pain as metal dug into metal, as shrapnel started to fly. 

They heard Pisces yell, but distantly, and not what they’d yelled, and rosethorns erupted from the ground, holding their wrists in place, away from their cracked and clawed-up chest. They fought, struggling to free themself, but the rosethorns only dug in and held them fast in place. They wouldn’t give way, and no matter how hard they struggled they could not pull the plants from the ground.

After a few minutes of struggle they felt their vambraces too exhausted of starlight to continue struggling, and all but collapsed into Pisces, static wails bubbling in their gorget and their helmet resting on Pisces’ breastplate. They heard reassurances, echoed at a distance, hushing them until their sobs subsided into ragged breathing and sniffles. Pisces’ glove stroked their helmet, fingers running through their half-mane like they had lost complete control over their physical form. 

“Shh, Leo,” they whispered. “It is all right. I know, it hurts so very much. It is okay. You are going to be all right.”

Leo didn’t move. _Is this what corruption feels like…? Is this all it takes…? Oh, Athena, I didn’t mean to… I didn’t… Sagittarius…_ Another wail escaped them as the pain resounded, pulsing through their chest. They straighted out, mask to the floor, or Pisces’ lap, really- trying to make the agony stop. It sliced right through them, and it _hurt_. It stopped after a few moments, slowly receding as their breath faded with it, leaving them with nothing but gasping for starlight and dry sobs in their gorget.

Oh, Athena, it hurt so much. After a few more moments and Pisces’ gentle reassurances, they felt brave enough, energized enough to sit up, struggling to lift their breastplate at all, the corruption numb against their newfound injuries. Pisces held them steady until their breathing returned to almost-normal, a little quick, a little ragged, but still the breath of a cloth regenerating cosmos.

“Leo,” they began. They looked up at them, still horrified and unused to the violet corruption across their helmet and fins. “I need you to listen very carefully, and answer my questions as clearly as you can. Do you understand?”

They nodded slowly. Maybe Pisces knew how to fix it. But if they did, why wouldn’t they fix themself…?

“Right before the pain started, you were thinking about something. And right between the two bouts of pain, you were probably thinking about that same something. What was it?”

Leo wanted to answer, but suddenly, they couldn’t find their voice. They reached over, slow but certain, and held out Sagittarius’ arrow. It was all they could manage, and they were sure if they tried to speak, all that would come out would be a wail. Pisces nodded, slowly, understanding.

“You were not sure how Athena could love us, if Sagittarius was allowed to die,” they stated, and this time Leo was more ready for the pain than they expected, and they forced down their screams, holding onto their arrow and Pisces’ vambrace as tight as they could, stretching out their legs. It hurt less if they could straighten out, if they could regain the position and form when they were first forged. Pisces stroked their half-mane again, hushing them, trying to soothe them in whatever way they could.

“It is all right, Leo,” they said, when the pain finally subsided. “I need you to listen to me. Do not think about this, any of what I just said. Do not think about Sagittarius, as much as you can. It is that doubt that feeds the pain. It is your own anger and misery that corrupts you. Just focus. One boot in front of the other. We are going to rescue Aphrodite. We are going to rescue Aiolia. Focus on that. Do not allow anything to distract you from that. Focus on what we are here to do, and we will come out alive.”

 _Unscathed…?_ Leo asked, a wail escaping them in place of their question, and Pisces shrugged, seemingly understanding. “I cannot say that for certain. But we will come out alive. Come, now, to your heels. We can do this. Just remember that. We can do this. It does not hurt as much if it is Athena’s name we scream.”

Leo rose, slowly, leaning on Pisces, unwilling to trust their own metal. They took a breath, and then another, and slowly started to walk towards the castle’s silhouette again, Pisces’ vambraces around their waist, supporting them.

They noted vaguely that the two surplices followed them, speaking in hushed voices. The Pisces surplice seemed less angry, more… sorrowful, almost. The other one was gutted misery and wolf’s blood. Leo shook their head, forcing themself to remember Aiolia’s smile, and every curve and line of his body as they held him in the dance of battle.

Oh, Aiolia…

 

Leo didn’t stop leaning on Pisces as they walked, preferring to take the sliver of comfort that came from being held over walking on their own. Pisces rested the chin of their helmet on the tip of Leo’s, keeping an arm around their back for guidance. At some point the Pisces surplice had moved back up beside the two cloths and slipped their glove into their counterpart’s free glove, and they walked together like that, the three of them, the other surplice trailing behind with a taste of wounded and mourning starlight.

The march up to Heinstein turned from vague, darkened grasses into a dirt plains, not so much a wasteland as simply devoid of life. They marched onwards, towards the castle inching closer to them, until finally they came upon a cliff, stretching high above them, of which the castle seemed to be settled atop of.

“I thought the way to Judecca was full of snow,” Leo murmured. 

“This is a side entrance,” the Pisces surplice answered. “The Underworld rearranges itself for the Holy War, makes it harder to get from one place to another. Where we are is for neutral souls, and does not exist in this plane of reality when we are at war. You should visit, one day, when we are not. The land Spectres created means of flying of their own accord, and it is quite fun. But alas, the stairs up to Castle Judecca are this way.” They turned to the left, towards Leo, and lead them onwards.

The stairs were exactly as large as Leo expected them to be, set within the cliff, with no path leading up to them but made of stunning black stone nonetheless. At the top of the stairs was a figure, hair waving in the breeze, but otherwise unidentified. The Pisces surplice lead them up, the other surplice loud behind the three. Leo focused on the figure ahead of them, clutching their arrow, trying not to think of the corruption across their chest.

It seemed to take no time at all, to rise up to the top of the cliff, where the figure was, leaning against a railing at the edge, seemingly unaware of their existence. The figure did not look up as they approached. Leo leaned closer to Pisces, trying to see anything they might have recognized.

The figure had long blue hair, almost cotton-candy coloured, tied in a ponytail at his collar and waving in the wind. He looked out past the railing over the plains, a cat’s cradle of rosevines in his hands that he seemed to be fidgeting with. He wore a soft white tunic embroidered in gold, dark gray pants, knee high black leather boots and a black greatcoat tied in a half-knot around his waist, some sort of tie stuffed roughly into a pocket.

There was a scar just below his right eye, and several down his arms, like the flesh had been cleanly sliced and managed to heal over.

The man looked older than he ever had in life, but Leo still recognized him, half a second after both the Pisces twins did. Identical, agonized wails split the sky, and they both rushed to him, the Pisces cloth abandoning Leo’s side to get to him. The Pisces surplice made it to his side first, yelling something Leo didn’t catch, running to sweep him off his feet, and passed right through him.

They both stopped dead, terror and horror mixing in their identical, yet opposite starlight. Pisces whispered “Albafica?” in his direction, loud enough for Leo and the other surplice to hear. Albafica didn’t react at all, simply stared out to the plains, fingers weaving his cat’s cradle of roses.

“I don’t think he can hear you,” Leo said, softly. Albafica did not exude any cosmos at all, like he was just an illusion. “I don’t think he’s real at all. Just… some sort of illusion.”

“A memory,” said the other surplice, bow and three arrows in hand, voice shaking like they weren’t certain if they were allowed to offer their opinion. “Dreamed into existence by the grieving cosmos that has taken over Judecca. Something here is in pain, more pain than we can see. It may be best to find it, and put it out of its misery. We need to find the goddess of revenge.”

“We do,” Leo agreed, trying not to think about that surplice very much. “Pisces, let’s go,” they said. They walked over and gently tugged at their wrist, trying to gently pull them away from the memory of a grown-up boy who had died so needlessly and so bravely. “You can’t help him, Pisces. He’s gone… We have to go save Aphrodite and Aiolia.”

“Aphrodite…” Pisces said, softly, their voice cracking. “Albafica, I see you in every bit of him. Why… why did you have to go? Why did you leave me? Why…”

“Pisces, it’s okay,” Leo urged, hoping they would hear them. “It’s okay. He’s gone.”

Pisces turned to look at them, as if finally hearing them. They took a deep, ragged breath, and turned back to the memory of Albafica. They leaned over to him, and gently pressed the airspace of their helmet to his temple. “I… Thank you, for coming back, in the end… Even if I- I was never enough… Thank you.”

Leo gently tugged their wrist, and Pisces all but collapsed into them. For a few moments they rested together, Leo’s arms around Pisces for a moment, before Pisces finally stood up again, arms still clasping them, and they nodded. The Pisces surplice had taken the moment to say their own final words to him, alone, which Leo tried not to listen to, partially to focus on their friend, and out of respect. They suddenly felt grateful that Pisces was with them, and they were together, at least. Neither surplice had anyone left to them, and at least the two cloths were vaguely friends. The Pisces surplice would mourn alone, with nobody to comfort them.

Leo would follow Athena anywhere, even if she was evil, if they could trust they would never have to grieve alone like that. Time seemed to resume, and the other surplice let out an awkward cough that seemed to imply ‘let’s please get going’. They went.


	7. one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's amazing how bad of a day you can have if everyone else is having a bad day. It is also amazing how good of a day you can have if you just don't realize everyone else is having a bad day. Leo Cloth, unfortunately, isn't that great at life advice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so NaNoWriMo is over, finals are over, I want to finish this fic by the new year. Be prepared for a Lot of fic over the rest of the month, I'm dedicating it entirely to writing because I am done with college IT stuff. Hell yea. Hope y'all like the seven fuckin pages this apparently is.

The other surplice, much as Leo refused to give them any bit of their attention, lead the three onwards, their forelegs stamping into the ground in a march and their hindquarters following, bow notched with three arrows at an almost-rest, hesitant. Somehow, Leo had ended up between the Pisces twins, one vambrace around Pisces’ tassets and their other gauntlet gracing evil-Pisces’ elbow. They followed the other surplice down the pathways until the unforgiving silhouette of Castle Judecca was in front of them, towering over them, its front gardens covered in snow and its great doors ajar.

Leo took a breath, the starlight filling the airspace within their breastplate, and followed them in. The other surplice seemed to know where they were going, the wounded starlit air around them easing up a little.

“You know this place,” Pisces said, their voice flat and dead, leaning on Leo without actively putting their weight through their cracked breastplate, and their question was a simple statement, without any adornment or meant gentleness.

“It has been over two hundred years since I was here in a dream, and five hundred since I have been here in metal,” the other surplice answered. Their voice resounded against the walls of the entrance hall, heavy and thudding against the darkened stone. “Pisces would be able to tell you more about it. Five hundred years since we both were awake, and still, it barely feels like moments.”

“It never feels like anything more,” evil-Pisces chimed in. They met Pisces’ dull defeat with shattered starglass, all edge and sharp and more raw than cut and bleeding flesh. They stepped forward, to walk alongside their colleague, leaving the two cloths behind them, never looking back. “She has tainted our King’s halls with her filth. I wonder what she dares to do to his throne.”

They strode forward, every step a quiet click against the darkened carpet, and pushed open the doors before them that separated the entrance hall from the throne room. Leo pulled Pisces closer to them as they sped up, refusing to get left behind. Aiolia was ahead. He had to be. He was the only thing left now, and he had to be.

The throne room was bigger than the entrance hall, and even Leo had to admit, it was richly decorated. There were five thrones, which seemed a little odd. The centre throne’s headrest was adorned with a pair of silver seraph-wings, the echo of the Hades surplice that would have plagued their dreams if they still could dream under his binding. To their left, a pair of dragon’s wings, and beside it, arched feathered wings. To Hades’ right, the throne could not have belonged to the Judge of the Griffon Division, because he was not and had never been flowers and brambles. His throne was beside the one of flowers, the feathered wings down and not up.

Hades and his Judges, and directly beside him, what they knew from the barest memories of eight thousand years ago, to be Persephone, once. Her throne held laurels woven with blossoms, a few days old at most. The Spectres must have still honoured her when they disappeared. A pity, then, that Leo remembered her as someone who laughed and stained her dress in innocent blood. Less a pity that Athena had finally brought her down.

It didn’t matter. There was a shuffle from behind Persephone’s throne. They drew their cosmos to their gauntlet-tips, the taste of a technique on their starlit air, and the scent of roses invaded what wasn’t static lightning, and the other surplice raised their bow, three arrows notched and aimed perfectly at the moving shadow.

Fog rolled in, faster than clouds on a windy day, and the moonlight glittering through the stained glass Leo was deliberately not looking at vanished. “Circle,” hissed Pisces, and they all backed up, back to back in a sort of square, techniques ready to be fired off in any direction, wherever the attack would come from. The darkness invaded starlight and Leo couldn’t breathe, suddenly, blocking out the starlight and replacing their lightning with nothing more than cloying darkness.

They muttered something that they would never dare repeat under their breath. One glove found purchase on evil-Sagittarius’ spine and they pushed themself atop of them, standing on the back of their horse half, raising their wrists to the ceiling.

“ _Lightning Plasma_ , you little hyena,” they snarled, and the lightning came when they called it. Their gloves were a star and the light was blinding, chasing the fog as quick as it had come, forcing the shadows to withdraw and set the room all but aflame. They heard pained whines, and caught the tails of shadowy wolves scattering behind the pillars that edged the hall. 

“There’s no need for that,” said Nemesis, her voice drawling, and they whipped towards her. Evil-Sagittarius reared up onto their back legs, and Leo moved with them, bending at the ankle of their boots to stay in place. They had done this with- _no stop not now Athena’ll cry if you do-_ and it was too familiar to be anything but automatic. Four thousand years and they still refused to think they had lost any of what they had.

She was seated on Hades’ throne, lackadaisical, smiling, her own shadowy kamui holding her weight in a dance of bearer-and-armour, and the Nemesis kamui had to be thrice as powerful as any but the Pisces surplice. “This could all have been over, and you all could have been free, if you accepted I was right. This is just avenging what’s been done. All I’m doing is setting you free.”

“Say that to your own kamui, then, and fight us properly,” Pisces remarked, their voice still dull and lifeless like the corpses of stars, making no indication of even feeling the pain. Leo watched out of the corner of their helmet, gauntlets still pressed to the heavens with their warding light, and the violet swirls twisted across Pisces’ breastplate, blooming engraved rose upon rose. “I did what I did. I picked my poison.” They stepped forward, a single white rose in the palm of their glove. “I do not regret what I have had to do. And nor, I think, do any of us. I know who you are, and this is not worth it.”

Nemesis’ smile only grew. “You seem so very sure, but so did they, didn’t they? I suppose there’s only one thing left to do.” She lifted her hand and snapped her fingers, and Leo felt their light extinguish. The fog rolled back like water no longer held down by a dam, and the darkness engulfed them.

 

“Hey,” said a voice, and it was achingly familiar, and Leo felt their sight fade into the airspace of their helmet, and what they could see was a roughly hewn stone ceiling and a golden helmet floating above them, two inches from the top of their gorget. An achingly familiar golden helmet.

“Is this what death feels like…?” Leo breathed, feeling a gauntlet raise and place the side of their palm against that helmet with no backing, barely a frame for some cherished human’s face. The familiar warmth of a similar gauntlet pressed against the back of theirs, and the helmet shook itself a little, the barest trace of laughter in their voice.

“No, Leo my love, you’re not dead,” they said, and they let go of their glove to help Leo sit up a little. The room came into view, a large prison cell by the looks of it, one meant to hold quite a few prisoners before they could be properly rounded up, counted, and put into isolation. And yet…

They looked around, one glove to the ground and the other still pressed to Sagittarius’ - yes, the real one! - helmet. Here they were, all of them: eleven other golden cloths and twelve violet-like-danger surplices, and a few more, some they recognized and some they didn’t. The Gemini twins, cloth and surplice, radiating anger and insanity and a broken fragment of remembered love. The Libra cloth, in bearer form and with arms around a blackened Phoenix cloth that didn’t speak of any sort of corruption, simply the change that meant they were debating becoming a surplice again. The three surplices of the Judges, and poor Pegasus who never really got a moment’s rest taking shelter with Unicorn under Garuda’s wings. And there was evil-Sagittarius, their arms around evil-Leo, whose starlight was enthusiastic and sadism-dark.

“Look who finally came to,” snipped Capricorn, sitting on Sagittarius’ other side and evidently trying to ignore the way the Minotaurus surplice was using their hindquarters as a pillow. “Got it handed pretty badly to you by Nemesis, huh? If Pisces is to be believed, that is.”

“I did not lie to you, and I never will,” Pisces answered coldly, whose arms were folded and who mirrored Capricorn in ignoring that a surplice - in this case, Wyvern - was using their half-corrupted thighplate as a pillow. “I have already told you. Leo tried to claw the corruption out and if Aries cannot fix it, then that falls only within the jurisdiction of ‘not my problem’.”

Leo slowly scanned the room a second time, deliberately disregarding the argument, before they came to rest on Sagittarius, kneeling beside them, all golden and loving and still theirs and even better, still _alive_. They leaned forward, just a little, and reached into their boot, pulling out a single golden arrow.

“I think this is yours, Sagi,” they said finally, and they hadn’t realized how soft their voice had gone, or even knew how fragile it sounded, and they pressed the arrow into Sagittarius’ glove. Sagittarius’ starlight gleamed with joy, and they took it without their gloves ever leaving Leo’s, and suddenly their helmet was a lot closer than it had been, starlight so close to each other and about to mix-

Something soft and wet hit the side of their helmet. They whipped around, ignoring the grating from their breastplate. Their glove reached up automatically and pulled the remains of half a sandwich from the side of their helmet. “I’d say get a room, but you can’t, so knock it off. I don’t want to watch your torpid romance, it’s almost sickening as a trope and your prose is far too flowery to make up for it.”

Leo turned a little more, finding that the voice actually belonged to Griffon, who had settled near evil-Pisces’ boots in their animal form. “Fine,” they answered, and sighed, and put their palms to the ground and pushed themself up and into a position where they could mirror Phoenix-slash-Bennu-it-was-one-of-the-two and lean into Sagittarius’ breastplate. “What’s the plan?”

“Well, we don’t have one yet, we were still arguing about it when the wolves came by and threw the four of you in here,” Garuda answered. “I was hoping I might be able to go call on one of my retired bearers groundside, that was a no-go, got about five miles and then got thrown here too. We tried to overtake the wolves, there’s no chance of that, Cancer tried and it failed pretty spectacularly.”

The Virgo surplice looked up from their place between their twin and both Cancers, and raised a glove. “I have an idea,” they said. “I think I can break us out with what fragments I have left of Lady Lakshmi’s powers. Then we need to make sure the Goddess of Revenge doesn’t see us, and see if we can’t take her down.”

Virgo, the actual one this time, nodded. “I have an idea of why she did this, as well. She is a goddess, yes, but something in her powers is terrifyingly mortal. I do not believe this was there before. She should not need a vessel, and yet, I think she has one.”

“Vessels don’t need kamuis,” Leo answered stubbornly. “She had one, so no vessel could’ve been there.” They still hadn’t forgiven Hades for the last bout, after watching poor Sasha cry on Regulus’ shoulder over her brother burning up under Hades’ kamui. Alone had come back, sure, but they hadn’t forgiven him for it.

“I agree, she was using her kamui, and yet, she still had a vessel,” Virgo replied, their voice soft with an urgency that meant Leo wasn’t picking up on their meaning. “I have listened to the accounts of everyone here, and that mortal vessel is what is behind the illusions. That vessel has been spreading her memories across the Underworld. Not-Sagittarius tells me you came across Pisces Albafica on your way here.”

At Leo’s nod of confirmation, they continued. “If that vessel is indeed in enough control to do that, then that would be our opening. Not-me and I will break everyone out. The surplices will bring down Nemesis’ defenses and ward away the wolves. This is their territory, that should not be difficult. We the cloths will take her down.”

“Yeah, because killing goddesses is _exactly_ what the lot of you are known for,” muttered a surplice somewhere in the shadows, Leo didn’t see exactly which one. The statement was venom, and they disregarded it.

“Sounds good to me,” Leo said, and the shadows flickered as everyone else muttered their assent, and they shifted a little closer to Sagittarius, fingertips of their gloves drifting to their gorget and neckline. Sagittarius, for their part, responded by scooping them up as they stood. 

The Virgo twins were at their heels, and stepped forward to the prison bars that separated their cell from freedom. Everyone else seemed to automatically move back, Libra taking Phoenix or Bennu, Leo still had no idea what form they were in, and standing beside Sagittarius.

“Are you Phoenix or Bennu?” Leo muttered out, from their place in Sagittarius’ arms, where they hoped to be when this all was over. 

“I’m sure I’m someone,” the bird answered, tone mild and starlight neutral if a little confused. “I’m with Libra, so all is fine. We broke the world together, and maybe this time when I burn up I’ll fall back to earth. Who knows.”

The cosmos in the air thickened, daring, the Virgo twins with their gloves clasped and a black and burned fragment of a mortal soul between them, and if they were chanting in a proto-Indo-European language from the roots of their heritage, well, that only made sense. Virgo Lakshmi was three thousand years dead, and she had still been the most powerful Saint that had ever been, even if she’d found more power as a Spectre and died when she admitted that maybe she was still mortal.

The Virgos kept chanting, and the cosmos almost felt like fog, thick and wet and alive with stars that still loved them, even as they were nothing more than stardust like dew to the heavens above. The power was intoxicating, really. Their voices rang clear and true even if their words were nonsense, and it felt almost divine, almost like Athena coming to their rescue.

The gate was gone, and so was the light, and nothing stood between them and the freedom they needed to save the world, and Aiolia too, and those were the same thing in the end.

“Now,” said the Virgo surplice, and they all went.

 

They shifted into their lion form and ran beside Sagittarius, steps in tandem, claws and hooves clicking against the palace as they all ran from one mirror reflecting back at them to another, dodging the wolves that were patrolling and also the Surplices’ problem. It had been too long since they’d had a proper mission with Sagittarius at their side, and this was both worse and better than anything they might’ve dreamed of. 

They heard Aquarius let out a sharp whistle, two short rings and one long, the code of all Saints and Clothes that they’d found something. Sagittarius reared on their hind legs and twisted in that direction, Leo at their hooves, and they followed the direction of Aquarius’ call. The halls were dark and twisting and they’d seen two switchbacks since they’d left the dungeons. 

“What happened, Sagi?” Leo asked, glancing up at them while they were running. “You were attacked by wolves and you were gone. I thought you were _dead_.”

“Nope,” Sagittarius answered, their voice surprisingly as cheerful as their cosmos, indicating a true joy and not simply a leader doing their job. “Woke up with not-you in that prison with Garuda and a few of our allies. Those wolves have been hunting us all down. Also, you were the last to wake up, and my counterpart wants an apology if you’d be so kind for your behaviour. I don’t think they deserve it, and Pisces disagrees. I’m just glad you’re you. Please don’t get any more corrupted. I’d lose you forever and I don’t want that to happen.”

“It’s a mutual sentiment,” Leo agreed, and it was perfect time to put on the brakes, slamming their heels into the ground, tail lashing. In front of them was a mirror that made it impossible to see what was around it. It wasn’t real, of course, and when Leo stepped up to it and batted at it gently their paw passed right through it. They shifted their mask into a silent snarl.

“I hate that these actually work. Curse not having a bearer with flesh eyes that see around illusionary spells,” they muttered, and Sagittarius’ starlight behind them twinkled in agreement. 

“Only way forward is through it, I think,” Sagittarius answered, and Leo stepped through, hesitant, knowing they were right behind them.

The door opened to the outside, and they found themself on what appeared to be a courtyard, judging by the life that blossomed in the cosmos around them. It was also full of mirrors, refracting their cosmos right back at them until they didn’t know exactly where any of the edges were, locking them into what wasn’t a garden open to the skies but absolutely an endless room. They had a decent idea of where the edges would be, but no true idea of where they were. Leo could only look around in surprise. It probably would have been a beautiful garden to human eyes, but to them it was only cosmos and the ability to guess incredibly well at what was the equivalent in visual sight. They turned a slow circle around, and were surprised at how not surprised they were to find that the door was gone. Sagittarius, for their part, was also not there.

“Great,” they grumbled, a sudden regret that they gave back the arrow surging through the airspace in their chest. “At least they’re probably not dead this time.” They turned back to the direction they were originally facing, and started walking. The pathway they were on appeared to be smooth cobblestone, their cosmos refracting from it indicating a type of pattern. This might yet have been a private garden, meant only for Hades and Persephone back in the ancient days, when myth was more real than very repetitive and inconvenient demigods of Zeus. 

It came as well to no surprise that half of the courtyard had to be full of pomegranate trees. They sidestepped away from every one, knowing the tale, knowing what might happen if they didn’t. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, and they avoided the trees, leaning around them and scanning through for anything that might be out of place, or at least didn’t look like it was supposed to be there.

They listened, too, sniffing the air for anything that didn’t smell like flowers, noting the still air and the lack of any breeze or even the sound of screaming. Above them were still the vast array of stars, without human light or pollution to block them out. They sighed - there was nothing in this garden. All that really mattered from it was getting out of it. 

They kept walking, casting their cosmos farther out, wondering if they would be able to find their way back into the castle, since their exit had disappeared. And then, they heard the barest of leaves rustling. The air was silent and still, and nothing living was in this garden except for them. They paused, freezing as still as a cloth could be, listening for the rustling. It seemed to be due west of them, and they turned, and headed towards it.

The garden could have gone on forever, but they followed the rustle, until it became a sound of something more, of someone crying. Leo didn’t pause for a moment and kept running towards it, zigzagging where they needed to, and finally slowed as they approached what was a flicker of cosmos but nothing so near alive.

It was a girl, maybe eleven, tied to a pomegranate tree with ribbons that reeked of menacing cosmos, the kind of neutron stars and black holes and endings in ultraviolet light. They approached, slowly, letting their footsteps be heard and not bothering to muffle them. The girl looked up, her sobs stopping with a slight gasp.

“Who are you?” she asked, her hands soaked with her tears as her chest and upper arms were tied from the ribbons.

“My name is Leo, and I’ve always been called that,” they answered, almost automatically, nonplussed. “I’m sorry if it’s rude to say, but you don’t feel alive nor do you feel like an illusion. Can I ask what you are?”

She bit her lip, looking to the ground. “I’m a girl, and I think I am dead,” she answered, slowly, one word after another like she didn’t think the words would actually bubble up and out of her mouth. “Are these horrible wars ever really going to end? I don’t want more good people to get hurt and pointlessly die…”

Leo sighed, debating for a moment, then hating themself for debating at all. They sat down, pushing their forelegs to the ground, tail flicking. They didn’t have much time, but it was always worth it to reassure a child when the reassurance was clearly needed. “They’ll end,” they affirmed. “No saint in this war dies pointlessly. We’d be broken forever if they did.”

“Then why do they have to exist at all?” she blurted, staring at them with sorrow in the slivers of her cosmos and dismay on her face.

“I’ll admit, I don’t really remember how they got started,” Leo answered, slow and steady, picking their words. They really didn’t. They remembered fighting Hades for millennia, and Persephone too before Athena had managed to stop her for good, but they weren’t too sure if there had ever actually been anything before that. Before the war… If the time had existed at all, they didn’t remember it, and vaguely, that felt like a tragedy far more severe than all they did remember seeing. “But we fight because we believe in better than this, and if we’re going to find better, we need to make it. Because some bright day when the war is over for good, we won’t have to fight, and things will be better. Someone has to fight if we’re going to make better, and I am someone who can and will.”

She sniffled again, daring to start crying. Leo lifted themself up again and stepped closer, one paw at a time to keep her from being too startled. “They just die,” she whispered. “He was so kind and he was just slaughtered, he didn’t even manage to slow them down. It doesn’t matter how brave Athena’s saints are, they just get killed and they don’t get the chance to protect us.”

Leo leaned in slowly, hooking a fang around the ribbons that kept her tied, tugging at where it met the tree experimentally, hoping they could free her. One came loose, snapping with a sharp, quick noise, and she moved away, sniffling. “It’s okay,” they said, glancing back at her. “I’m trying to free you. Yes, they die. Humans always die. That’s the one thing I wish I hadn’t gotten used to. Humans die. They burn so bright, and they still die. That doesn’t mean we forget them.”

They leaned again, biting down on another ribbon, tugging it back until it came free and snapped. Five more to go, and when they reached out for a third, she moved away from them again, and sobs bubbled up and out of her again. “It’s not worth it. Wouldn’t you want to be free right now? So they wouldn’t have to die any more?”

They stopped, sitting down where they stood, curling their tail around their paws. They knew what they wanted to say, but not how to say it. “This begins, and this ends, with mortality. It’s for them that we do it. We can’t fight without them, and we need them, and right now I need to get my particular human back. I don’t want to leave you tied up here and I’m not going to, but believe me. They’re not free until I save them, and we can free the world. Putting down our cosmos now just means leaving ourselves defenseless against the Spectres.”

She sniffled again, her cries dying down. “What if we freed the surplices too, so they didn’t have to fight, either?” Leo shook their helmet, biting down on a ribbon, digging their paws into the cobblestones as they pulled it free. 

“They want to fight,” they answered. “They started trying to take over the world. I mean… Not all of them are all that bad. Some of them, I guess… They’re just trying to protect their world, too. But most of them want to fight, and we have to fight them. The ones that don’t will want things to be better, too. They’ll want better, and for everyone that wants better, that needs better, I want to fight for that.”

They pulled the last two ribbons free with their claws, offering a paw to her so she could stand. She did, slowly, her legs shaking under her dress. They could get a better look at her now, a side ponytail and a rose pinned into her hair. “What’s your name, little one?” they asked, tipping their head to the side. She sniffled, backing away.

“Agasha,” she answered, like she didn’t want to. “You should go. Before the wolves come.” They stepped forward, about to tell her to come with them until they found a safe place for her to wait. There was a flicker in the air, a dying neutron star about to burn out in one last supernova, and what they did instead was rear up on their hind legs and slam her to the ground, bearer form shifting into place and holding her below them. She screamed, and they held her down, putting their back to the snarl of wolves that had slunk up on them.

They snarled, photons rising in the air around them, static flickering into visible existence. A few of the wolves drew back, as if remembering what that lightning could do, but more took their place.

“You shouldn’t be out,” said one of them, snarling, and this wolf stepped into visibility in front of them, and a heavy necklace hung from their neck, a large jewel pendant hanging from the chain, so full of cosmos Leo could almost feel the trapped souls screaming. Some of the voices were achingly familiar. One called out, a soft but screamed _Leo, help me,_ and they knew. 

“You took my Aiolia,” they snarled back, trying to fight off the urge to see red and let loose every bit of static lightning they had. There was still an innocent child under them that needed protecting. All that lightning would kill her, too, and they weren’t willing to sacrifice someone who wasn’t willing to be the sacrifice.

“It doesn’t matter. You’re free now, but for now, you can’t be,” the wolf answered in more a voice than a bark. Something slammed into them from behind, grinding their injured and corrupted breastplate into the ground, and where Agasha had gone they didn’t know. They didn’t know anything else, either, as the darkness rolled in.


	8. what if

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Pisces twins have a really bad day. They also discover that living suits of armour don't have tearducts, and without human bearers, cannot cry it out for a few hours. Must suck to be the two Twin Fish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot believe we're almost done. I've had the song for this chapter waiting and ready to go for... a while, actually, and a better idea on what I wanted to express in here than in the last chapter. Pisces Surp is so much fun to get in the head of.

Pisces slipped out in the confusion and kept going. The scent on the air was pomegranates. These tunnels in Judecca had been sealed for millennia. They knew. They’d checked, exploring over and over again as they showed their bearers ‘see, this is not the worst, there is more space to wander and breathe and it would be rude to walk beside someone’. These hallways had been sealed upon a tragedy they wished they’d never witnessed, and they still smelled like pomegranates, like screaming, like the blood of innocent children spilled before Athena had forced them to stop.

But some things, they could never have forgotten. Their name, before they took up a title and a creed and forced themself to be something they had never been before, in the name of avenging what had been lost. Their bearers, more than most of the other Gold Surplices and far more than had ever been necessary, if the Lady of Evil had learned to treat her chess pieces with any sort of respect.

They noted the cosmos of Griffon tailing them, and ignored them. They had seen Nemesis, too. Leo had missed it, but they hadn’t - the Goddess of Revenge was using a vessel, strange as it seemed. Some unseen emotion twinged in the jewel of their gorget, the throat of their bearer if they’d had one, and they slowed, pondering for a moment.

“Maybe…” they muttered, an idea slowly dawning over the horizons of their mind. Maybe they had it all wrong. It wasn’t unheard of, and it had been done before. There was a reason the Spectres hunted down the innocent. Innocence was powerful. Spilled blood, almost as much.

They took a breath, feeling the starlight rise to the tips of their gauntlets. It was possible to escape Elysium. It was far more likely during the equinox, when the Spectres lit the torch in honour. It was paradise, where a mortal spirit may heal. It was a place nobody wanted to leave.

“But may heal does not always mean you will,” they said, softly, just enough to hear their voice hang in the air before them, crystalline and quiet, a light violet of a musical note. Their boots were moving before they even heard them hit the ground, bolting into a run. Faster and faster, until the landscape seemed to blur around them, reaching out to grab a corner to swing around it and keep going.

They knew what this was, painfully so, the familiar guilt rising in their gorget and staying there. Their bearers were always broken. They were always _broken_ , and not one had begged them to take the poison out of them. They didn’t even want it to stop. They had only ever wanted to stop breaking everything around them, and turned that pain inward.

Pisces had looked at them, every one, wanting to be closer to others without damning them all, and said, “I know a place where you can be forgiven,” and that was all they had ever needed to say. They’d all shared the same terror, the same guilts, and was it ever a comfort to a broken mortal Saint screaming for solace to say “I have seen this same agony in every Pisces Saint before you who has summoned me here, and you are not alone in this,” because to be real, two hundred years apart was never a comfort.

They kept running. Lugonis had wanted his family, in the strange way it had been offered, in a way he wouldn’t be damning them all. Theophania had wanted her freedom, away from those who hated her for who she was and loved her for nothing more than what they had assumed of her. Albafica, the latest of them who had sung them free of the Cathedral… His voice still rang clear, higher-pitched and cracking, he had been dead but that had been so easy to reverse.

“I didn’t save her. She was still _crying_ and I hadn’t been able to stop him,” he’d whispered between sobs, hands shaking, and all Pisces could do was reach out and allow him to flinch back before he relaxed, the reminder that he couldn’t kill them sinking through him, and take his hands. All they had been able to do at all was offer him a short, second chance to fix it. In the end, the two of them had fixed nothing, and he’d burned bright and then he was gone.

They always felt that way, towards every bearer, and this one was just this side of still bleeding from the freshness of the wounds. And yet… His memories were the clearest, even the ones they knew only through him and not experienced at his side, and they were certain, and it was painfully obvious. They weren’t sure how they missed it.

“Pisces, wait up,” Griffon called, and they heard the clinking noise of a surplice running and shifting forms at the same time. They swung around a corner, gauntlet reaching out to catch the wall as they did, sliding and still running.

This was Judecca. It wasn’t far from the Cathedral in times of war, and a fair jog away in the brief periods of peace that they did get. Elysium was closer. Griffon’s hand caught their pauldron, sending them both to the floor.

“You figured something out,” Griffon said, sitting up, knees still against the marble, wings spread out against the floor. “Did you find what was foreshadowed? Pisces, tell me you found the arrow in the beginning that we missed.”

“Not-Leo had an arrow, but that is not it,” they said, words a little jarred, rising to their feet. Griffon had allowed their bearer to cause an awful lot of problems for them, and yet, they still couldn’t hate him - without him, Albafica might never have called them. Some evils they were willing to tolerate, in the name of what came after. “You saw the Goddess of Revenge, Griffon.” They placed their gloves against their tassets, leaning slightly forward, their chest heaving and their voice a little ragged. “You felt her vessel, did you not? A cosmos that lead us here, tonight, in this deathless dream.”

“I…” Griffon’s reply was barely there. “You’re not saying…?”

“If it is not blood, it is innocence, every time,” they spat, rising fully, cosmos regenerated enough for another sprint. “We forgot about the casualties. Again. This is on us, for once. Mindless slaughter that came back to damn us all.” 

Griffon swore. “What are you suggesting we do?”

“We see what else we have forgotten.” They spun on their heel and started walking again, slower this time, allowing their cloak to billow out around them. “You remember what started these endless battles. What we - what I - had to give up for them. The world came to a stop around us, because of what she did. What we had to do to defend ourselves. This world we have now is far different.”

“It’s not so simple, I don’t think,” their companion said, quietly, increasing the speed of their stride to keep up with them. “That isn’t how the story usually goes.”

“If you tell me that this is going to get worse, spare me,” they snipped, their voice curt and chilly. “Return to your siblings, Griffon. This next step is between me, my counterpart, and the memories of what’s left of my poor bearer. He deserved better.”

“Don’t they all?” Griffon answered, punctuating the rhetorical question with a bitter, clipped laugh. They were there one moment, and gone the next. There were other things that needed doing, and they broke into another run, willing Judecca to shift hallways and rooms into their path, shortening how far they were going to their destination.

They broke out onto a balcony and crossed its threshold in three steps, pushing off the railing and diving towards the ground, below the edge of the plateau Judecca was seated on, watching the Meikai shift around to meet them. They allowed their cape to fly free, breezing behind them. Then a few rosevines appeared between their gauntlets, and hooked onto the zipline that ran from every tall thing to every other, and launched themself towards home.

 

The Hades surplice was still in position, holding their favourite jug, nothing more than the dull colour of granite that they absolutely weren’t, having turned towards Pisces’ symbol on the dais, which lit up as they passed. They dipped the chin of their helmet as they passed, pushing open the doors to the Cathedral and heading right to the end.

There wasn’t a single Surplice there, set within their alcoves, but they ignored the marvel in favour of rushing to the very last one on the right, stepping up and onto their own alcove, and spinning the back of the wall behind it. The wall shifted with them, spinning until the opening was not to the prayer hall but to their own rooms. This was where the Pisces Spectres lived and slept, when they were called, and while the rooms had been cleaned out from Albafica’s absence in wait for another bearer - their counterpart had mentioned someone named Aphrodite, and that did sound just delightful - they hadn’t been entirely cleaned out. Pisces demanded a few keepsakes. Something to remember them by, something to be brought to them when they didn’t think they could handle it any longer.

“Fancy seeing you here, but I suppose that it is only fair.” A voice almost identical to their own sounded behind them, and they turned. There was their counterpart, gauntlets elbow-deep in a chest of Lugonis’ clothing, two hundred years old and meticulously preserved.

“Get your filthy gauntlets out of my possessions,” they answered, feeling the sharp burn of scorn rise in their airspace. They strode forward, towards them, debating every remark and memory that might worsen their corruption, make it harder for them to function.

“No,” the Cloth replied, voice flat. “He wore these with me, as well. Where are Albafica’s possessions? I need his necklace, if we are to proceed, if I am right.”

They glowered, Cosmos flaring in their anger, and they shoved their counterpart out of the way, closing the chest and moving it back into its place. There would be time for folding his clothes back into place later. They rose again and turned towards the bedchamber, crossing the threshold with little more than memory, and taking the silver-and-agate necklace from the pruned, potted tree on the nightstand. Their counterpart followed them, stopping in the doorway, and Pisces shoved past them.

“You have a lot of their possessions,” the cloth remarked, gauntlets folded in the doorway as they swept past, scanning the room for anything else they might need.

“Call me materialistic. I lose enough when their clothes are soaked too much in their own blood to be preserved. Millennia, and unlike you, even if I never speak their names, they are still present in the jewels of memory.” They stopped by the spinning section of wall that lead back to the Cathedral proper, and tapped the jewel at their gorget, perfect aquamarine dug up from the depth of Tartarus, once. “Now get out. This is not your place.”

Their counterpart rolled their eyes, and thankfully, blessedly, got out. 

 

What they hadn’t expected, on the quick return to Judecca, was the mirrors. Of course, they’d been putting up with those since the Cloths had arrived, but that was because they were there, and the Meikai didn’t like them. The Meikai didn’t like a lot of things, and generally made those opinions known. Even worse, the Meikai didn’t quite understand collateral damage. After the fourth dead end, they were willing to use the last vial of ichor in their emergency satchel - hidden in a corner of their breastplate - to pull their wings open and fly back to Judecca. Unfortunately, that wasn’t much of an option, so they kept going.

The walk would have been peaceful. But it was still true, in the end, that they had done this. The Spectres always liked collateral damage, now that the Holy Wars had forced their beginnings out of literally everyone’s memory. Sometimes they wondered if anyone at all remembered the beginning. This was one death too far. A million, several even, deaths too far. None of them had ever been just, and it was finally time for someone to stand up and argue that it wasn’t worth it.

It had been worth it, in that distant land where once-upon-a-times went to die. And they remembered the time, the painful, peaceful, halcyon time when Hades would have met that brave mortal at the end and clapped for them, ‘ _Well done, my darling, you’ve come so far, and now you may get the reward you have earned_ ,’ instead of snarling and striking them down.

On one gauntlet, they missed those days. On the other, they could never have forgiven the Lady of Evil for what she had originally done, and what she had been doing ever since. It wasn’t right for any human to be damned as the Pisces Saints, forced to live separately or be made murderers for the crime of wanting company. It was utterly sickening, to force such a sacrifice on them with no regard for what they wanted.

They brushed up against the side of a tree, another mourning soul imprisoned in the mirrored bark, and ignored its wail of pain. There was little that could be done for the dead in what was left of the Underworld’s greenery. In the split silence just afterward, they noted the footsteps and cosmos of their counterpart, following them back to Judecca.

“I should leave you behind,” they called, just loud enough for the other to hear. “You would not deserve anything kinder.”

“Please do not start.” Their counterpart shuffled forward, until they were almost walking in tandem. Pisces shifted their stride, making a point of walking at a slightly different beat, so they were never synchronized. They were not a replica of the Pisces Cloth. They had been something else, before, and would never be quite the same. Perhaps a reminder was due.

“Do you think this is truly our fault?” the Pisces cloth asked, tilting their helmet to almost look them in the eye. “You seem to be thinking it.”

“I think these wars have gone on enough, and far too many have died, for no ground gained and after all the sacrifice, we still have not avenged her nor fixed what you did,” they answered, voice dull and blunt. “I would stop, if it were not my current sole purpose to fix what you break. I do not regret what I must do, or being the one to do it. I regret that the situation ever was allowed to arise where I - or anyone else - would have to.”

Their counterpart did not answer. They knew why, of course. They were only right, and they had to know that. It was evident enough, by the rosethorns violet curling around their counterpart’s polish. It was only satisfying to watch, the way the curls expanded and grew and bloomed small roses of corruption in them. It was a surprisingly good look for them, truth be told, the despair and hopelessness.

And then they heard crying. The two paused, and Pisces scanned the trees and pathways around. And there she was, and the pang in their gorget was emotional pain mixed with the memory of Albafica’s curled form, shaking with sobs. And there was the wolves, six and snarling and advancing on the girl tied with ribbons to the three.

“ _Starlight Rose_ ,” they snarled, and the ground their boots bloomed. A wolf let out a yelp as it rose off the ground, help up by roses blue as bruises and speckled with starlight, and they let the roses explode. Two wolves down, four to go.

Their counterpart all but jumped onto one, deciding wrestling it was better than being actually useful. They advanced, stepping between the girl and the wolves, a rose in each glove. “Hold still, little one,” they murmured, just loud enough for her to hear, and what they said was an incantation in Ancient Greek, one they hadn’t used since becoming the Pisces Surplice.

The greenery around them that didn’t imprison souls exploded, turning to magma-hot water and steam, and the only wolf that was left was the one still wrestling their counterpart. Pisces ignored them for the moment, and knelt to the girl with the rose in her ponytail, and began to untie her, cutting through the ribbons with thorns.

Her sobs slowly died as they cut her free. “Are you all right?” they asked, forcing their voice to be a little less musical, a little less dangerous-sounding.

“Why did you save me?” she asked, voice raspy. “You’re… you’re a… That’s not what you do!”

They didn’t have time for this. They had to stop the Goddess of Revenge and put the Meikai back in order. And they had to refold all of Lugonis’ remaining clothing and put it away properly, which was just as important. But they also knew that rose, just a little too well. They sighed, the sound resounding off of every bit of metal in their airspace, from their breastplate to their helmet to the tips of their fins and boots. And they shifted to sit down beside her, about a foot away.

“It is what I do. It is what I, and my siblings the other residents of the Cathedral, have always done.” The words were not easy. They walked such a fine line, a delicate thing so close to breaking, between total destruction and fixing what they could. They reached up, and jabbed a finger at their counterpart. “It is my entire job to fix what they break. Do… do you remember the Pisces Saint of your time, little one?”

She stared up at them, and nodded slowly. They held her gaze.

“I will not speak his name. I could only do so if he died mine, and he did not. But he was here, after he died. He was angry that he never did save you. Angry enough to come back… angry enough to defy all odds so he might try again. See the world doused and drowned in blood if it meant he could do it all over again, and do it better.”

She started crying again, which was the opposite of what they wanted, but still salvageable. “He shouldn’t have died at all! Why… why are you even _bothering_? It doesn’t matter, nothing ever does!”

“You are entirely correct,” they agreed, twisting their fingers until they had a small cat’s cradle of rosevines, fidgeting with it in their lap. “It does not matter. I am not sure it ever did. But if nothing matters, and the victors of the battle decide history, then I suppose all that matters is what I decide, because I lived to tell the tale. He would have wanted you to know, I think. Why do we stop, right now, and free you, when you do not matter to me at all? What justification do I truly have?”

They paused, then, glancing just behind them to check on their counterpart, still trying to wrestle a wolf four feet bigger than them and failing miserably without ever being able to die, and thankfully not paying attention. The girl was listening, eyes wide and stained with tears. 

They let out a brutal laugh, sharp and bitter and short. “Because there is blood on my gloves - is there _ever_ so much blood on my gloves, sweet one. You are correct that I gain nothing from this. But still, it must be done. Still, we must occasionally be kind. Because, little one, this world is not. This world is so far from kind or just that the only mercy it could be capable of is slaughtering the innocent before it breaks them. So we must be. We may be hardened and bitter and jaded, but still, we must be kind. Because nothing is going to be kind in our stead, and if we wish there to be anything left to be kind to, we must ensure that it survives. I am kind, when I am given the opportunity to be. That does not mean I am a nice person, and do not mistake me for one. They are not the same.”

They shifted onto one side of their tassets and rose, turning to face their counterpart, now angrily throwing piranha roses at a wolf that was ignoring them entirely in favour of biting the armour itself.

Pisces would have rolled their eyes if they had them. “Is that helping at all, not-me? Or do you require assistance in such a menial thing?”

“That’s where you’re wrong. That’s where you’re all _wrong_ ,” the girl spat, and they turned back toward her, and the rage in her eyes was green and a light they knew to be divinity, and she stood against the tree, her torn dress gone, replaced with a kamui they knew better than to argue with. “You just can’t _see_ it, so I’ll have to make you!”

Their cosmos rose, about to stop her, and the world went dark.


	9. the light behind your eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leo's bad day is really just becoming a terrible, no-good, very bad day. But at least there's a surplice there as annoyed and inconvenienced about it as they are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I can't believe we got this far. I really can't.

Leo awoke before the others did, so they thought, as the world came into a dizzying clarity. They staggered up onto their paws, metal refusing to clink against the carpet of the throne room. When they had stopped being surprised about the fact that they were still in Judecca, they didn’t know. They looked around, trying not to move their helmet too much, noting the Cosmos of everyone around them, mixed scents on the starlit air, most, if not all, of which were unconscious.

Almost everyone they had seen on the quest so far was there - eleven other golden cloths, twelve darkened counterparts. The Judge Surplices were at the foot of their respective thrones, and Bennu/Phoenix was knelt at the base of Persephone’s throne, as unconscious as the rest. And seated atop Hades’ throne was the nightmare herself: Nemesis, dressed in her kamui, looking only mildly bored watching them sleep.

“What do you get out of this?” she asked, her voice dull, her Cosmos at rest, once she had noticed that Leo was awake. “What do you get out of this war? Is it worth all you gave up to get this far?”

They opened their mouth to speak, unsure of what to say, and the words tumbled out of them anyway. “It’s what’s right,” they began, finding the argument a little repetitive at this point, and she cut them off.

“Spare me your sentiment. It means nothing. A thousand years and then some more, and it still means _nothing_.” She shifted her position upon the throne, taking her chin off of her palm as she spat out the words, like she truly had to get this across. A wave of dizzying pain passed through Leo’s breastplate, and they knelt to lay down again, finding solid ground the clarity they needed to continue. The pain faded only minimally, but they forced down a breath, once and then twice, somehow finding the strength to keep talking back. 

“How are you any better, right now?” Leo demanded, voice weak but still steady. Focusing on her words meant fighting through the brilliantly-new agony to hear her, and back again to process it, and one more time through to spit out an answer. “You’ve imprisoned innocent people, too. You took our Saints, you took their Spectres. The Holy War hasn’t even started yet.”

Fifteen feet away, one of the clouds of hazy Cosmos shifted, growing clearer. The Pisces Surplice sat up onto their knees. “There are no innocents in war except the slaughtered,” they said, quietly, bravely, but their words rang with a bitter truth. They sounded older than Leo thought they were, like they had seen more than they had ever let on. “Your best ending is my worst, and vice versa, and so forth. That is the point of war. It is not and has never been about good or evil. It is about who gets to keep what is theirs, and who gets annihilated.”

“ _Enough_ ,” Nemesis snarled, and she rose from her throne, kamui silent against the golden piece. “You want war? Do you really? I will give you war.”

Leo rose, first to their paws and then to their hind legs, which became just their legs, and the world turned as they did. Electrons flickered at the tips of their gloves, photons of light wandering and stepping into command. The lightning was at their fingertips, they just needed to rise to her challenge and win. And then the ground began to shake, slowly, gaining speed, until it was nothing more than a blur. Nemesis stood before them, Cosmos black as the empty space between stars, black as entropy. Black as an angered, disgraced goddess who meant her revenge. 

“ _Judgement_ ,” she hissed.

“ _Lightning Crown!” “Starlight Rose!”_

The three blasts collided in a fury of light. The ground shook below their feet and they staggered. Turning into the world and kneeling at one knee, snarling, breathing in as their Cosmos rose again to them, calling the stars of every heavenly light down to them.

“ _Photon Burst!”_ they screamed. “Pisces, back me!” The floor set itself alight as the technqiue charged, one-second two-second three. The Pisces Surplice dove forward, roses at every step, curling the plant life toward the throne and seeking Nemesis out. They pointed the photons, shaking, gasping at the effort. If they hit, it would do an admirable amount of damage. And there was the Pisces Cloth, rising to their boots, Cosmos charged and ready to help. They stepped forward. Leo screamed, they thought, their voice distant, telling them to get _down_. They barely heard their own voice.

Pisces didn’t seem to hear them. The Pisces surplice spun on their heel and tackled their counterpart, diving to the ground just in time as Leo let it all loose. For a moment, everything was light, everything was the barest shimmer of music in the very idea of miraculosity. And they fell, the ground a distant dream.

They shook their head, slightly, finding themself back on their paws on the ground. The Pisces twins were a few feet away on their knees, breath ragged, Cosmos dull, gauntlets clinging to one another like they didn’t know any other way to be. And maybe they didn’t. After so long, fighting, hating, maybe they didn’t.

Pain shot through them, like a poison dart or a missed rose or something even worse, something unfamiliar and filled with agony. They collapsed, barely able to feel their hind legs, chin on the floor. The Pisces twins glanced at them, one a deep violet and the other looking like they’d tripped over a full can of purple paint, but neither made a move to help them. They almost didn’t want them to, the pain was so intense. 

Nemesis was back on her throne, her Cosmos agitated on the air, but she wasn’t moving. She was only furious, at the moment. Leo wanted to get up, argue with her some more, but there was a good chance they’d only be put back into the ground. It wouldn’t have been enough, and they knew that. Unlike Pisces, the only one who had ever come to their rescue was Sagittarius, and certainly not their counterpart.

And yet. Sagittarius rose from the pile of unconscious armours, pulling an arrow from their hind leg, drawing their bow, setting the arrow in place and pulling back the golden thread. They recalled, once, having seen that very thread spun from straw, once, distantly, in the back of their mind that was still dreaming of a day when this all was over.

Sagittarius aimed the arrow, and Nemesis watched them. Leo noted a shadow just like them on the other side of the room, black and glinting and barely more to boredom than Sagittarius’ righteous fury. Only corpses in motion, falling, caring so much they never felt a drop of it.

The twin archers released their arrows with the barest shimmer of a breath. Nemesis was suddenly standing, and the corpses fell in slow motion, and she strode forward, and the arrows flew.

They caught her in the throat, her kamui’s gorget, catching the jewel at the centre of her throat. The arrows fell through, as if she was never there to stop them. They did not reappear. The jewel in kamui shimmered.

It cracked. The cracks grew, and suddenly split, and the jewel that Leo knew to be the core and lifeblood of the Nemesis Kamui shattered. 

 

Sagittarius’ gauntlets were around their tassets, holding them steady. When they had arrived to their side, Leo didn’t know. “It’s okay, Leo,” they whispered. “It’s all right, my love. You’re not hurt, not any worse than you were.” Their voice was soft and gentle and _perfect_ , the rope thrown to pull them back in from the ocean they’d fallen into without ever knowing how to swim. They collapsed against their breastplate, finding the rhythm of their breath, clinging to it. Sagittarius was there. Sagittarius was alive. The world had slammed against them and yet they could still almost-taste the flower bouquet they’d held at their wedding, so many thousands of years ago. It still seemed only yesterday, as so many things were.

They looked up, hoping to see the helmet of their lover, and on the way, there were two figures at the dais, locked in a battle of wills, and they stopped there. On one side was Nemesis, leaning on her thighs, collapsed on the floor, her kamui painfully broken around her. Leo winced at the sight. On the other, young Agasha, clad in her ragged dress and the rose pinned in her hair. She looked angry, full of power, Cosmos so black it would have choked them if they were not in the protective light of Sagittarius’ embrace. The two started at each other and only at each other, Agasha’s tears falling free down her cheeks, Nemesis’ face streaked with blood. And yet, they had the feeling the blood was Agasha’s.

And suddenly, it was clear as crystal, clear as agony. Leo staggered back to their boots, Sagittarius rising with them, gloves on their tassets, steading them, unaware that they only had two legs at the moment. Nemesis was the goddess of revenge. Of balance. She cut people down when they rose too high, and allowed them to fall. Agasha had called her to cut down Hades, but… She had taken the Saints, too. She had cut them all down, and used Nemesis to do it, used her as a battery for the power she needed.

“How many seasons have you suffered for this…?” Leo murmured, mostly to themself, and Agasha still heard them. She didn’t move.

“A thousand and a day more,” she snarled, not taking her eyes off Nemesis. “That’s as long as he could keep me for, under the rug and hidden and someone else’s problem. I only ever wanted to see the only Saint who _tried_ live long enough to see it end and you _killed_ him, you killed them all, you let them die and you didn’t stop them!”

Her voice rose in its anger, and cracked on the last syllable. The sound roared to life, and the windows cracked, and shattered. The Virgo twins, over Sagittarius’ shoulder, rose, supported by the Leo Surplice, inching towards Nemesis, as if hoping to help her up. They almost made it.

Agasha screamed in rage. The world flickered, black and clear and black again. Leo didn’t feel themself hit the floor this time.

It didn’t last long, though, and all that had hit the floor was Sagittarius, forced into bearer form and helmet resting on Leo’s tassets. Nemesis was on the ground, unconscious, black tendrils of what they thought might’ve been agony personified keeping her down in chains. Agasha, in her rags, was settled upon Hades’ throne, looking as though she had discarded Nemesis easily with nothing but a scream.

“Huh,” they said, softly, their eyes drawn to the pendant in her hands, glowing blue-bright with souls. The imprisoned. Her hands made a quick, complex cat’s cradle of the chain, and undid it just as quickly, twisting it again into a different shape. She lifted her chin just enough to stare at them. “You did that. You won. There isn’t anything left to be done.”

“I did that,” she answered. “I won. And there really isn’t.”

“Is it making you feel any better?” they questioned. The world was sharp edges and colour they couldn’t much see but could feel out for in starlight, almost blinding in the edges that threatened to slice them open. They were in agony, they were sure, but yet it seemed so distant, like a dull throb that they just couldn’t quite feel. If they were overstepping their boundaries, they didn’t know. It didn’t honestly, truly matter. The pain was still dizzying, and they didn’t think they could rise quite yet.

Agasha’s laugh was short, brutal, and reminded them a little too painfully of Pisces’. “No,” she said, “and it never will. Hades only locked me up because I’m Nemesis’ vessel, and I died too early when the stupid Spectre cut me down for being in his way. I don’t really know. I didn’t exactly have a plan, here. I didn’t think I’d ever get free.”

“What do you plan to do, now? It… I can’t stop you, now.”

“I _know_ you can’t, cat. No, I don’t know what to do at this point.” Her sigh was deep, and resounded through the room. “Was it worth it? Was all the fighting worth it? They didn’t deserve to be cut down over and over again. It never… it never _stopped_.”

Leo was drifting in a star-held melody of the seas, and her voice was the only driftwood on the horizon, the only thing that they might hold onto. “I think so,” they said, softly. “I don’t think I would have done it if it wasn’t. Worth it, I mean. I don’t really think it was about gods, not really. They had their own thing… I just wanted to help people.”

Beside them, the Pisces Surplice rose from the unconscious embrace of their twin, and they looked up at her, and their Cosmos felt exhausted, and tired, and almost ready to give up. They reached into the pocket of their tassets, and pulled out what Leo thought was a necklace, and held it up to her.

Agasha was on her feet in a moment, Cosmos rising in anger. Leo flinched, but only barely. “You stole that,” she snarled, and her voice was divine once more, a sharp pain slicing through the ocean of their world. “You stole that from his _grave_.”

“He gave it to me,” they answered. Their Cosmos radiated nothing but calm, betraying nothing of their thoughts. “He gave it to me, and told me to remember him. He was bitter, and broken, and wanted to still perform one last act to save the world.” Leo watched the surplice rise to their boots, slow and steady like the tide, holding out the necklace like a ward against her.

Agasha was silent, raging, like it really did keep her back, her snarl etched perfectly on her face still full of baby fat and a childhood long forgotten but still cleaving to her. She had spent several times’ over more years in her prison than she had spent alive. The Pisces surplice took a single step forward.

“He was broken, and he was a hurricane in motion, and he wanted to see you safe and set free at the end of it. Maybe… maybe that is why you were called here. The blood of someone so truly evil in the eyes of the greater scale, set down willingly to set you free. It tipped the scales, and now… now we are here.”

Leo wished they had any idea what it meant. Sagittarius was still unconscious against them, and brushing their gauntlet over the band of their helmet brought them, little by little, back to reality. 

“If that’s how you think, if you really can’t believe you were doomed from the start, then you deserve to die. You’re only pieces! They don’t _care_ about you at all!”

Agasha’s snarl was cut off by Pisces, laughing, their helmet thrown back with mirth and brutality. “Tell me something I do not know, little girl,” they spat. She drew back, her face full of alarm over her anger, hands rising to her chest and twisting together. “Of course we are pawns here. Of course we are nothing but. You forget, little girl, that you are not a chessmistress. You are not in command here, either, any more than I am. That great Goddess of Revenge called you here, and the Lord of Darkness tried to stop you, and you were called into play for a reason beyond any of us. Human, armour, mortal, immortal, divine… It is beyond all of us. You should have realized that, if you wanted to fix it. Play your role.”

“You have all these powers,” Leo remarked, slowly, realizing what the Pisces surplice had meant. “Can you do anything but destroy, with them? No point stopping the Holy War if all that’s left from your anger is rubble, anyway. You can maybe fix it, if you wanted to. Mend what’s broken. Nobody said you couldn’t.”

Agasha stopped, and looked down, like she might be listening. Her Cosmos faded, like she was little more than a girl dressed in rags, who had seen war, whose innocence was far out of sight. “I want him back,” she said, and her voice was broken, moments away from tears. “I want him back, I want them back, I want this fixed for good. I don’t want any more war. I want… I want it to get better.”

“That is expressly,” Nemesis interrupted, drawing all attention to her broken form as she pulled herself into a sitting position, “why I came to you in the first place.”

“We are listening,” the Pisces surplice said, and Leo noticed everyone begin to stir at the voice. The Virgo twins rose first, Capricorn and Aquarius and Scorpio all following. Sagittarius shifted to cuddle a little closer on Leo’s lap, still within their bearer form, as if not interested at the moment in shifting around.

“If you pay. If _all_ of you pay… I can tip the scales. So listen, now, and here is my deal.” Nemesis took a breath, gathering her Cosmos and her kamui around her, and her voice was suddenly steady. “One last Holy War. One last war that decides everything. This time, only one will come out alive. This will never rise again, not like this, and the dust will finally be allowed to settle. Agasha, my vessel, will lead it. She will tip the scales, in the favour of either Hades or Athena. She will not do so by her own hand, but her actions will decide the fate of these wars. Save her, and you save your family. Here is my price. You will not know her, you will not know who my Apocalypse Child will be. The Cloths of Athena will remain in their prison, and will not speak to each other, or to their Saints, or anyone else. You are silent witnesses of the world, one last time. The Surplices of Hades will kneel, and lose the experience they have freely shared before. You will retain your powers, and not your memories. You will not know what brought you here. You will only know to fight, as the Cloths do. One last Holy War, where everything is equal. One last battle, and I swear upon this, Agasha, my Apocalypse Child, will be the last innocent casualty of this feud. It is time for an ending.”

Leo looked around. They were paying so little, so little more than they already had been, and it would end it forever. No more watching their Saints die. There would be more Saints, surely, but it would not be quite as brutal, surely… 

They found their voice. “The Cloths of Athena accept your deal,” they said, and Sagittarius gripped their gauntlet.

Unsurprisingly, it was the Pisces surplice who spoke after them. “My name is Icthỳes, truly, and this means nothing to you now. It may not mean anything to you ever again. But it means something to me. I… am not what you think I am. None of us are. But we still made the ones you think we are.” They looked up, and their gaze was starlight, and sharp, like a supernova in motion. “On behalf of the Surplices of Hades, we accept your deal. Bring this to an end. May we come to victory, now, when we truly need to… May the world forgive me.”

Agasha nodded, and she seemed to glow, her Cosmos suddenly white, iridescent, even. “I’ll tip the scales. I’m still me. I’m still mortal, like none of you. Still small and short-lived and fragile and… Burning. Burning so, so bright…”

Her voice faded with the light, and in her place was a red-haired girl, a foot shorter than her, who didn’t seem to know where she was at all.

“Aquila will watch over you, I think,” said Nemesis, softly, as the pendant in the Apocalypse Child’s hands fell, and shattered, against the floor. The light went out, and Leo heard laughter. “Go on, now. Find what you need to. Tip the scales. It isn’t much, but… For once, there is a chance.”


	10. we are golden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the sun sets, on a world that has accepted an ending, and few things right now could be sweeter.

When they had arrived at the restaurant, bearer form and laughing and a gauntlet swung around Sagittarius’ pauldrons, they had no idea. Scorpio said that this ‘Waffle House’ had the best food for an after-quest drinking party, and Leo believed them. How they had gotten there was a mystery, but there were nigh thirty armours collapsing into the dining hall, taking over most of the tables, recklessly dropping into whatever spots were available. Someone had found change, and was punching a music player into spitting out something with a beat.

The waiters didn’t even seem to care that none of them actually had bodies outside of armour. They just took orders and started making them.

“Teenage dreams in a teenage circus, running around like a clown on purpose!” someone sang out, slamming to the beat with a brightly-coloured drink in hand. Taurus was collapsed against the golden-but-otherwise-unrecognizable armour, smacking one of Libra’s shields to the beat. 

“Who gives a damn about the family you come from?” called one of the surplices, mock-toasting at the words. Leo found themself raising the arrow Sagittarius had finally given in and let them keep. “No givin' up when you're young and you want some!” 

The food arrived. The waiters had given them enough food to fill an army in appetizers alone. It was not going to be enough. Leo put three plates together into a platter, holding it up for Sagittarius, who was making a very good couch for Leo’s helmet with their breastplate. Between the two of them, the platter was empty before the song even ended - though Leo was pretty sure the record player was broken, or Mika’s song was a lot longer than they though it had been.

They ignored the clatter of the Aries twins pushing two metal tables together, a large pot of what looked like lava simmering away on a scavenged stove they’d dragged halfway across the hall. “Anyone need repairs?” Aries called, not-Aries thumping the table emphatically with their hammer. Sagittarius pushed them forward, and Leo took a deep breath, and headed over.

Between the twins, their breastplate was fixed in a matter of moments, no Saint blood involved. The corruption was a little harder, and not-Aries laughed, made a great big show of throwing a glamour on until they were a six-foot, half-ram kind of demigod with deep bronze hair to their knees and waved the corruption away.

They nodded their thanks, ignoring even heavier the Virgo twins, who were determinedly trying to tell Pisces that they wouldn’t be corrupted if they didn’t hang around with Spectres. Leo tapped their shoulder.

“Aries twins have you handled, don’t listen to these two,” they said, their starlight entertained but hoping to get back to Sagittarius for more food and affection. 

“Thanks,” Pisces answered, dipping their helmet and sliding away. Not-Pisces was sitting on top of a table, eating their way through a deeply alarming amount of greasy food. Two tables off, Phoenix - who was recognizable now, like they’d finally decided on what to be - was keeping count in the refuse of Libra’s armpit as Wyvern and Cancer stared each other down as they cleared plate after plate, the human waiters dutifully providing them with more and more food.

Leo thought they might actually run out soon, grabbed a plate right off a waiter’s platter, and headed back to their spouse. 

Sagittarius, however, had another idea, and when Leo got there, they gestured to a frankly alarmingly large chocolate milkshake, topped with cherries and with two straws. “To share?” they asked, and they sounded like heaven. Leo handed the plate to not-Aquarius, who took it gratefully, and all but pounced onto Sagittarius’ tassets. Sagittarius pulled the milkshake between them, and they leaned in, and it was delicious. They reached out with their Cosmos, and locked it with their spouse’s, and all was perfect to the background of bad pop music and Griffon’s even worse poetry, detailing the various heroics of everyone involved.

It was only a few hours later when the chatter had finally died down, the Pisces twins had collapsed from exhaustion, and most of the Gold Surplices were out cold from Garuda’s discovery of alcohol, which only they were affected by. Leo stayed where they were, cuddling up against Sagittarius, who was asleep after all the food and the milkshake, their gauntlets still around Leo’s tassets, keeping them close.

The door pushed itself open with the help of Garuda and not-Libra, who both were covered in what they hoped was car oil.

“We hotwired a truck!” Garuda called, their voice singsong and starlight delighted. “Everyone climb in, I get to drive everyone’s drunk tassets home and then we get to all go back to hating each other one last time! Cheers to Hades, folks!”

Leo laughed, and nodded at a waiter, who smiled and gave them one last milkshake with two straws, this time strawberry. They held it in one glove and nudged Sagittarius with the other.

“What?” they asked blearily, pushing themself up to sit up a little. 

“We’re heading home now, Garuda’s driving,” Leo informed them. “One more milkshake to split on the way home?”

Sagittarius laughed, and stumbled into proper totem form, and followed them out, nudging drunken Gold Surplices awake and hoisting Cancer up onto their back just to make sure they weren’t left behind. They piled pretty carelessly into the back of the truck - some bigger model made for hauling farming equipment - and Leo sat right at the back, gauntlets over the edge. Sagittarius climbed in beside them, one glove to steady the milkshake, the other to link their fingers with Leo’s.

“Think this ended okay enough,” they said, and Leo nodded, and when their spouse leaned in to brush airspace against theirs, they leaned back, and the kiss was chocolate-milkshake flavoured, and perhaps, there was still a chance for this world, as the sun set orange-golden over Sagittarius’ shining plates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't actually believe I finally finished this. This is straight up the most polished thing I've ever written. The ending has been planned like this since like, chapter four. Now. I may be done with AA the fic, but if you like this idea and concept I've made up here, the tag is AAverse and I am not done with it yet. I have (so far) three more fics set in the AAverse, and I will be writing more. If you liked this, please check out my other stuff! I'm not done writing yet~ If you want more extended universe that also has AA stuff in it, my Mirrorverse stuff is just AAverse + Persephone + Other Extended Lore.  
> I am also gonna be writing more than just AAverse/Mirrorverse stuff - I'm gonna start writing my Aeternum AU soon, aka postapocalyptic TLC fun. So like... Thanks for coming out all this way! I hope you liked this fun little year-long project! We aren't done yet, but I'm really grateful for you all for sticking with me! Couldn't have done it without all of you - Ryry, Kiril, Anony, the Underworld's Hottest Mess groupchat, the Aries Hell Group - thanks so much to everyone involved, and especially you, Mx. Reader!!
> 
> Yours,  
> LocketShoru


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